Covid-19 Vaccination Harm

Esther McVey Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. I have before me the answer that he received from the Secretary of State when he raised the matter at Health questions on 17 June:

“I reassure the right hon. and learned Gentleman, the constituents of his I have met and other campaigners that I am having discussions with the Cabinet Office about how we deal with that and other issues that have been raised this morning…He knows the complexities involved, and I have been grateful for his advice as a former Attorney General. I do not have specific progress to report now, but I reassure him and campaigners that this issue has not gone off the boil and we are working to find a resolution.”—[Official Report, 17 June 2025; Vol. 769, c. 159.]

That was almost three months ago, so what has happened in the interim? I hope that the Minister, whom I am pleased to see in her place, will be able to deliver a response to the questions as to what review is being carried out, which aspects of the scheme are being reviewed, when evidence will be invited, if that is to happen, and what the timescale is for all this, because at the moment people are in the dark, as my right hon. and learned Friend said.

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

I, too, want to acknowledge all the work that my hon. Friend has done. He has been absolutely tenacious on this issue. I was a Minister in the Cabinet Office, so I know. I had the calls, the questions on the Floor of the House and the meetings. I hope I can help the Minister here today, because a lot of the heavy lifting has been done in the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health and Social Care. One of the key questions that my hon. Friends raised was about the amount of compensation. Why has it not been increased, at least by inflation, in decades? A lot of that was put forward in the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health, and a lot of the work has been done and should have come to fruition by now, a year into the new Government. The other issue was about people fearful of being clocked out and not having enough time to be compensated. We need the clock to start once they are in the system and not when they are out of it. Work has been done on that as well.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend. I hope that the Minister listened to her and will have direct answers to the questions that she raised. Having spent so much time badgering my right hon. Friend, when she was a Minister in the Cabinet Office, to get something done on this issue, I perhaps need to take the opportunity to say this. I think in the end I reached the conclusion that she had been badly let down by the officials in her Department. It was unfinished business at the time of the general election, and if the current Secretary of State is in discussion with the Cabinet Office, then another 15 months have gone by. Having regard to the work that was done before, I would hope that we are getting close to having answers.