Parliament is playing catch up on the WHO Treaty negotiations

We need representation, not disinformation, thank you

Just last week the EU and the World Health Organization announced that the Covid vaccine pass system established during the pandemic will be “scaled up at global level to deliver better digital health services for all”; adding that “today a [European] success story becomes a [global] standard.

Exactly how the Covid vaccine passport was a “success story”, is left unsaid (possibly in observance of the adage that if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all). Likewise, no more detail is given on exactly how and to whom such a passport scheme would deliver better ‘health services’, digital or otherwise. However, even if one generously assumes an entirely benign explanation for the WHO developing a global standard medical status-based identification document, it can certainly be said that an industrial-scale data bureaucracy is aligned with the rapidly-expanding ambitions for the WHO already signalled by the well-documented proposals for a new Pandemic Treaty and amendments to the existing International Health Regulations, on which UK mainstream news media, somewhat belatedly, began to report a fortnight ago. 

Expansionist ambitions unveiled in plain sight

If adopted in full, those two draft agreements will transform the WHO from an international health advisory body of recently chequered history into a supranational authority with powers to order lockdowns, mandatory testing, travel restrictions and vaccinations at national and regional levels during a public health emergency of its own declaring. 

Among other new powers the organisation will acquire control over the allocation of medical resources between its member states; it will mandate minimum levels of public spending on pandemic preparedness and response (the current proposal is to require an eye-watering 5% of national health budgets plus a yet-to-be-specified percentage of GDP); and it will expand its censorship activities by “strengthen[ing] capacities to … counter  misinformation and disinformation”. Put simply, an astonishing land-grab of national sovereignty and autonomy.

The idea to supercharge the WHO was the brainchild of Boris Johnson, among other esteemed world leaders of the pandemic era; while one hand tooketh back control the other was giving it away, so the UK Government has played a visible and supportive role in the negotiations to date.

Then, two weeks ago, responding to concerns raised by a group of back-bench Conservative party MPs, Andrew Mitchell, the junior Foreign Office minister, delivered an ostensibly robust yet curiously ambiguous reaction to The Telegraph: “We’re clear that we would never agree to anything that crosses our points of principle on sovereignty or prevents the UK from taking decisive action against future pandemics”. We’ll fight them on the beaches if they cross our, erm, points of principle. 

Nothing to see here

Back in April, a Westminster Hall debate had been triggered on the topic of the Pandemic Treaty’s ambitions by a petition signed by 156,000 people, though it went largely unreported by mainstream news.  The turnout for that debate from parliamentarians had been high for an ostensibly dry and complex discussion of international law, with a number of MPs voicing concerns over both the substantive proposals and the negotiation process, which until that moment been conducted by civil servants operating comfortably out of sight of Parliament.  

Judging by the condescending generality of the Government’s official response to the petition delivered by another FCDO junior minister, this time Anne-Marie Trevelyan MP, it had also been negotiated mostly out of sight of the ministers. Apparently unable to address the concerns raised by her colleagues with any specificity, she confidently asserted (incorrectly, as it happened) that “the speculation that somehow the Treaty will undermine UK sovereignty and give WHO powers over national public health measures is simply not the case”.

Shot from the hip

Steve Brine MP, Chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee, perhaps auditioning for a reprised junior ministerial post himself, had earlier sought to clear the deck with a weary ‘nothing to see here’ intervention comparing the WHO to NATO, to whom he considered we had already ceded Parliament’s sovereignty.  Steve, it seems, would be relaxed about the Director-General of NATO triggering an Article 5 mutual defence obligation without consulting NATO member states, and then going on to direct British troops to deploy against the perceived aggressor, as would be the analogue of current proposals for the WHO Secretary-General’s new powers of pandemic declaration and policy direction under the International Health Regulations.

Justin Madders MP (Lab), a former solicitor who might have known better than to patronise seemingly before he had read the legal documents, had also jumped in with both feet: “Given the amount of time that this House has spent debating questions of national sovereignty over the past five or six years, would we do something that would give away sovereignty?” he scolded incredulously before chiding that “The treaty has nothing to do with Bill Gates”.  As it happens the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one the foremost donors to the WHO, second only to the US Government, so in some ways it has everything to do with Bill Gates, but we knew what he meant.

What was most striking about this short and mostly unreported debate, though, was the apparent willingness of experienced, traditionally sceptical parliamentarians to take the Government at its word that the WHO will not acquire new powers of direction over its member states, despite the published legal documents showing the contrary in unambiguous black and white text. Are we not entitled to expect our MPs to have done some basic homework before they pitch up to denounce their colleagues’ concerns?

Forced into the sunlight

The story finally hit the mainstream last week only when, coinciding with the 76th annual jamboree of the World Health Assembly taking place in Geneva, a group of MPs led by Esther McVey wrote to the FCDO to record their detailed concerns about the WHO’s plans, and the serious absence to date of Parliamentary scrutiny and accountability.  “We regard the draft Treaty and IHR amendments to be incompatible with the assurance given by Anne-Marie in the Westminster Hall debate that the UK will at all times remain ‘in control of any future domestic decisions of public health matters’ and that Parliament’s sovereign right to determine UK public spending ‘is absolutely not under threat’”, they wrote. (You can see a full copy of that letter exclusively on the UsForThem website, here).

Since then, the concerns raised in the McVey letter have been echoed in hundreds of letters sent by equally concerned members of the public to constituency MPs (including from many of the members of our children’s campaign group, UsForThem).  Disappointingly most of those MPs have been unable to engage substantively with the legitimate questions raised, instead resorting to a cut-and-pasting of generic lines presumably fed by the FCDO press office that there is no risk of the UK ceding rule-making powers to the WHO. 

Who needs facts

Suella Braverman, for example, confidently Suella-splained to one constituent: “There is nothing in the proposed treaty that would impact on our ability to take decisions about national lockdowns or associated measures”, nonchalantly unaware that the amendments to the International Health Regulations may do exactly that, as had been confirmed in February 2023 by the WHO’s own expert review committee.  Almost identical supine lines then appeared in letters sent from Anthony Browne MP and David Simmonds MP.  

Jeff Smith MP, our Shadow Minister for Sport, Tourism, Heritage and Music, reassuringly confirmed in an email to his constituent that “speculation that any future treaty will undermine UK sovereignty and give the WHO powers over national public health measures is, in my view, unfounded. Indeed, protecting national sovereign rights is a distinct principle in the first draft text, which makes no reference to vaccine mandates, lockdowns or any such draconian policies. It states that the implementation of the regulations ‘shall be with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons’.”  All of that is true of the draft Treaty text that Jeff appears to have seen, but unfortunately for Jeff the provisions he referenced appear in the other key legal document under negotiation.

Clearly there is still work to be done to ensure that our parliamentarians can fully represent the concerns of many of their constituents on this contentious yet so far under-exposed piece of international power-play.  But of greater concern is the dereliction and indifference displayed by MPs of all corners of the House.  One might excuse Ministers of State for towing a bland Government line, albeit constituents ought to be entitled to engage with their MP as representative first and minister second; but back-benchers and opposition MPs are nothing if not scrutineers of the Government’s deeds and a voice for their constituents.

We shouldn’t expect our MPs to be across every detail of every international treaty under discussion, but the risk of a significant divestment of autonomy over not only health policy and spending, but also economic and social policies during a health emergency, should merit at least a few hours of attention.  After all, one person’s ‘digital health service’ could become another person’s tool of medically-based segregation.  Parliament, and parliamentarians, should aspire to do better than this.