Paul Flynn - Read My Day

Short-listing wiles?

My stitch-up detector has sounded an alarm on news from Pontypridd.

Intriguing reports tonight on the shortlist for the 'job for life' vacancy for a Labour candidate in Pontypridd. Kim Howell's retirement offers a wonderful opportunity for this rock solid parliamentary seat.

There has been behind-the-scene arm twisting to avoid an all-women shortlist. Press reports claim Kim Howells has been backing pharmaceutical drugs lobbyist Owen Smith. 

Mr Smith was Labour's candidate in the 2006 Blaenau Gwent by-election, triggered by the death of Peter Law, who famously won the seat as an Independent the year before. Mr Smith was defeated by Dai Davies, who had been Mr Law's agent and who also stood as an Independent. Owen Smith disappointed by not seeking re-selection as Labour's candidate in Blaenau Gwent for the next general election. Mr Smith's father is Professor Dai Smith, the Welsh Arts Council chair and close butty of Kim.

Shock rumours tonight are that strong candidate Tom Griffin, who chairs Pontypridd Constituency Labour Party and used to work as a researcher for Islwyn MP Don Touhig, has not been short-listed. This could be judged to be another attempt to weaken the shortlist in order to ease the selection of Smith. Sadly such things are not unknown in the recent history of New Labour..

Among the names mentioned on the shortlist  are former AM Delyth Evans, and international researcher Bethan Roberts. There are formidable candidates. Pontypridd party members have proved in the past that they are not willing to be bounced into selecting the favourites sons of New Labour. Their strong independent streak convinced them that Jane Davidson and Mick Antoniw were better than New Labour groupies that the party machine was trying to foist on them. There may well be a backlash against Owen Smith if the elimination of Tom Griffin is  resented. I look for confirmation of the rumours.

 It will be an intriguing ballot and Pontypridd may surprise again.

Finger friendly

David Cameron is giving practical backing to one of my campaigns.

In a not entirely serious blog I urged fewer handshakes. They are used by the insecure to express their strong personalities by inflicting pain. Greeting William Hague at the Tory conference David ignored the offered hand and tapped him on the shoulder. It looked odd but it is still a practical alternative to overused handshake. It was the point when Cameron's weekend peaked.

Platitude porridge

It troughed with his speech. Tory representatives queued for hours for a feast of oratory. They were served a porridge of platitudes. He made a strong case for politicians to use notes. I did not hear one idea or one phrase, that quickened the pulse, or excited the brain. 

He had had a dreadful day. Over breakfast he saw the Sunday Time headline saying that Gordon Brown was on course to win more seats that Cameron. It's probably a blip but not one that a party leader can ignore. It's difficult message for him to give, 'Return to your constituencies and prepare for more opposition.'

The Tories are shocked and baffled. The harder they hit Gordon Brown, the stronger he bounces back

'Old Boys Club' rules

They still don't get it.

PASC, the Select Committee on which I serve, expressed 'serious concerns' about the appointment of Lord Lang as chair of the committee that oversees the appointments of former ministers and civil servants to business appointments. Lang is a former cabinet minister with many business interests. There was a spot of bother with one 

Lang this week rejected our criticisms of his appointment in the magazine Civil Service World. He is not the independent new broom required; he is part of the parliamentary tribe that thinks it’s reasonable to have a clutch of jobs when ministerial life ends. Lang is a director of Marsh and McLennan since 1997 Lord Lang was sued in 2004 'accused of orchestrating a massive fraud against customers.' Bloomberg reported on 13th of this month that the company 'will pay $400 million to settle a lawsuit by investors who said they had lost money because the company failed to disclose illegal practices'.
 
Ian Lang insisted that the company were blameless. I asked him whether 'they had paid the $400 million out of the goodness of their hearts?' Others will ask the same question. While there may have been no dishonesty, the perception of wrongdoing is present.

There is a wide choice of independent candidates for membership of this committee from outside of the parliamentary tribe. Former trade union leaders, charity workers, ombudsmen,  even an 'ordinary person'. The last person likely to end the scandal of the revolving door is someone who have been propelled through it.

Lang rejects the idea that a 'hair-dresser or a taxi-driver' should be appointed to the committee. He says that the strength of his committee is because it includes,'a retired ambassador, a retired senior civil servant,  a retired chief of the defence staff and four peers.' Precisely. It's the great and the good judging the great and the good. This hidden scandal of the revolving door allows formers ministers and civil servants to profit handsomely by trading on their experience of public service.  Lang agreed when I questioned him at the PASC meeting that there was a danger that the decisions of top people may be distorted when they are in office by the prospect of retirement incomes. This is potentially corrupting.

Lang has not been touched by the public suspicion and anger aroused by the expenses scandal. He is still living in the old world where honourable gentlemen can be trusted to take impeccable public spirited judgement of honesty. This is the cosy 'Old Boys Club' that created the expenses scandal. 

Perhaps Lang's committee will be the final bastion of establishment complacency.

Smoking to decrepitude

Total number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan = 266

This is an offer I can easily turn down, even though I am great supporter of the anti-smoking campaigns.

They write, "As part of our campaign activity we want to generate as much publicity as possible and to highlight to young people in particular, the dangers of tobacco and the harm it does.  This will encourage children and young people to stop smoking or better still, never to start.

 

As a high profile Welsh politician who young people see as a role model and look to for inspiration, we would be delighted if you would support the campaign by assisting us with our public relations activity.

We want to use your image to demonstrate the harmful effects of smoking on facial appearance using a unique and innovative, age progression software.  The software will predict how you might look in the future if you were a smoker. "

How I will 'look in the future'? Perhaps when I am 96 or 108? With or without smoking I think the pictures will be pretty grim. Perhaps it would be better if I sent in a picture of me at 30 and a recent one. That could show what I would have looked like if I had not stopped smoking 40 years ago.

This is my most recent picture. What would smoking have done for me? Frightening thought.

New Newport

Sculptor Sebastian Boyesen inspected the proposed site for the Raymond Steed statue on the banks of the Usk. Here pictured with Bert Bale,

 supremo of the Merchant Navy Association, Sebastian was impressed by this wonderful site.

The new flats have wonderful views over the Usk. they are very desirable residences.
 

 

 It would be grand to have the daily drama of the second highest tide in the world as a next door neighbour. 

Poetry rampant

Congratulations to whoever decorated the river walk with beautiful poetic concepts.

 

 Were they commissioned from one of Wales' national poets? Gillian Clarke is suspected. I do not recognise the lines from the famous poems written in praise of the river Usk. Stimulating and handsomely executed in Celtic script the message will intrigue and delight. The Millennium Centre in Cardiff led the way with giant poetic ideas.

 

The artery Usk drinking rain

The tide sneaks in the thief on the flats.

What footprints remain in company with trees that weep

Peace reigns.

Total number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan = 265

Suitable words of regret have been said by the Mail on Sunday for last week's serialisation of my new book. One headline was an outrageous insult to my fellow MPs. Some of them still feel angry because they may believe that headline represented my view. It did not. It misrepresented them.

The paper asked me tonight whether I had a row with one of the MPs attacked by them on Sunday. I had a very civilised conversation with Bill Etherington. It was claimed in one paper that he does not make a major contribution to the work of the Council of Europe. This is untrue. Bill has been powerful advocate of the environmental agenda for many years. His views are widely respected.

The second excerpt will be published this week. It will include an account of the worst moments of my life.  It was very difficult to write. But it would not be a complete auto-biography without a description of the event that changed my life profoundly. There will be a lot of letters from people who have shared similar experiences. I welcome them and I will reply to them all.

 Two launches have been arranged for the 'The Unusual Suspect.' . The first is in the Ffrwrm Arts and Crafts Centre in the High Street in Caerleon Newport.  It will be at 6.30 on Saturday 6th March.  The Commons launch will be of the 7th March at the Thatcher Room Portcullis House at 6.00 pm. Entry is from the Riverside entrance of Portcullis House. The book will be published on Monday next St David's Day.

Only about a dozen people have seen advance copies. I was touched today when Dr Russell Rhys of Caerleon said how much he appreciated the tribute  in it to the Newport Councillor Walter Waters who died recently. Russell and I knew him as fellow councillors. We are both anti-boxing. The sport that was Walter's life. But he took a principled stand against it at a mature age. Walter's place in the book is because he is an example of an un-sung hero and one of the many admirable councillors that I have worked with over the past 40 years.

Rebounding insults

Nigel Farage  miscalculated the impact of his carefully prepared base insults.

Crude mindless name-calling created sympathy for his target. The football hooligan was loose in a forum of civilised debates. The reputation of this country for courtesy is damaged.

Farage has got his publicity. He might even be excluded from the Euro-parliament for a week or two. That is probably his intention. 

Could electors be sufficiently stupid to vote this preposterous exhibitionist into Westminster?  Surely not.

Liam's Babel Fish

One of our regular class witnesses at the Public Administration Committee Liam Byrne delighted us  today. His knowledge is encyclopedic, he is seductively persuasive and he has a neat line in humour.  

But today called for special congratulations. He addressed us in simple English. Previously we have mocked his incomprehensible jargon stuffed management speak. He probably had a Babel Fish is his mouth. I commended him. 'I have had my bullsh*t detector on full power for an hour now, it has not alerted me once."

Sadly Tony Wright's reign as the committee's distinguished Chairman will end with this parliament. A fascinating idea is that final meeting should summon him as our only witness. We could cross-examine him on the value of the committee's work under his chairmanship.

What a good idea.

No authentic expenses

It was no Mo Mowlam film. That was hauntingly realistic. It was exactly like watching Mo.

Brian Cox's portrayal of former Speaker Michael Martin in last night's BBC Four programme 'On Expenses' did not work. It had the guile and the vanity but not the kindness and diffidence. Not for a second did I believe that this was Michael Martin. Some of the staged scenes were unbelievable to those familiar with the House of Commons.

I have a legitimate moan about the heroine of the expenses scandal Heather Brooke.   when I met her six weeks ago, she said 'I'm surprised you are still talking to me.' I did not recognise her name when she turned up to interview me a month earlier about one aspect of expenses that I have complained about. No-one told me that she was the person who had opened the books with her Freedom of Information request. Nor did anything think to mention that the programme was called the MPs Gravy Train.

As it happens, I have no regrets. They were not straight with me but they provided me with a platform for the points I wanted to make. I am still on friendly terms with the programme and i have been filmed for another future programme.

Victor Winstone

On Jan 15th I put a link to Victor Winstone's last book on this site. The great historian of the Middle East  died last week. He sensed that at 84 he might not live to see the book published. It's a great visionary work. A fine tribute was paid to him by Tam Dayell in the Independent. 

"In 1991 Victor Winstone achieved another unsuspected "first" with his biography of Howard Carter, discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamun, which characteristically stressed the class bias in Britain's recognition of achievement. In a book that achieved world-wide praise, he pointed out that the most famous and lucrative discovery of all time, made by a self-taught Norfolk lad, had been rewarded with not a single official or academic honour, "not even a lowly MBE".

In our last phone conversation Winstone was appalled by the chaos in Iraq and the violation of archaeological sites and the museum in Baghdad. His most recently published book was War Without End, a critique of Anglo-US foreign policy from 1900 to the present, which with apposite timing, he launched online during the course of the Chilcot Iraq Inquiry while he was ill with lung cancer.

In his personal life he was devoted to numerous animal welfare causes and in Devon, where he and his pianist wife Joan Marigold lived for more than 20 years, he was an implacable enemy of the hunting lobby. His letters on that subject in the local press attracted much attention. He leaves four daughters and one son, and eight grandchildren."

In his final work, Victor asked, "Why were Bush and Blair so anxious to take the hazardous road to war when the political route would have provided obvious advantages.  

Why, a year after the initial Palestinian assault on Gaza do the USA and Britain maintain the fiction that the war in that territory is the responsibility of the two warring factions when in fact Israel keeps up a war of attrition that has caused 1400 deaths in a single year, and nearly 6,000 severe casualties.

Why, ten years after the instigation of the Anglo-American war in Afghanistan, is there still fighting and a call for intensified effort in London and Washington by the alliance when a political solution would be so much more effective?

Why the continued insistence on the occupation of Iraq almost ten years after it was subdued with ‘shock and awe’? And why does Blair insist that given another opportunity he would blurt out the same lies all over again, just as the Chilcot enquiry begins its in-depth examination of one of the most blatant acts of aggression ever carried out by one of the world’s most powerful nations on one of the smallest and last armed?

 

Only here on the the Internet are intriguing authorititive answers to those questions. ‘War Without End’ is the first book for eight years from the pen of one of the most prolific British writers on the Middle East. Victor Winstone said: ‘this is positively the last, but after a life time devoted to biography and political study, I can’t help thinking it is the most significant’

Losing on the Home Front

The battle for the Afghanistan is being lost on the Home Front.

Tonight's Newsnight proved the increasing unpopularity of the war. 64% of the population believe the war is not winnable. Only 30% disagreed. 63% want the troops brought home this year. The Iraq war was unpopular before it started but public opinion softened later. I know of no precedent in our history for a war that had so little public support. The opposition can only grow as the fallen are returned to Wooton Bassett in numbers that grow inexorably.

Today's evidence of the deepening treachery of President Karzai destroys the purpose for which our soldiers lives are being sacrificed. He has trampled on previous agreements to install his placeman to control future elections. We rail against corruption but we are backing an incurably corrupt regime.

How can it continue?

Provocative Present

It was a curious choice for a present. He was surprised and could have been seriously aghast.

Michael Mates MP has been involved in Ulster for for 55 years. He went there as a solder in the Ulster Rifles in 1955. He once threw Ian Paisley out of Stormont for a semi-riot that took place. Michael has been a stalwart contributor to the peace process since 1990.

Yesterday was his final day of his membership of the British-Irish Assembly. He is standing down at the next election at the age of 77. Kind speeches were made about his work and he was presented with a present. it was a wrist watch.

The audience shuddered. His brief ministerial career came to murky juddering halt over a watch. He was thought to have been too close to a Cypriot businessman. The evidence was a watch he gave as a present. It was inscribed 'Don't let the buggers get you down.'

Mates yesterday did not explode at this reminder of his foulest hour. He joked that there was no inscription about 'getting anyone down.' Happy retirement.

Reassured

I have calmed down a bit down from my irritation at the way the Mail on Sunday packaged the extract from my new book. They have promised this week to give me advance warnings of both the extracts and the headlines.

The reaction from self-confessed Mail readers has been very reassuring. Many have been in touch. They have read the extracts and they said they have ordered the book. That is exactly the point. Paradise would be lots of people seeing the serious messages of the book.

Crumbling

Today was a day of bliss for Labour MPs.

The Guardian headline  was poetry. It said that Tory support is 'crumbling'.  The reason seems to be dis-illusion with the Tory calamity tactics which produces a foul-up a day. There are changing views on Gordon Brown. The more he is unfairly attacked, the greater his popularity.

The Irish Way

It could not have happened 20 years ago. 

The first meeting of what is now the British-Irish Assembly was harangued by both sides at their first meeting in London in 1990. Irish Republicans said that cooperation was impossible with their traditional oppressors. Conservatives were equally vitriolic at people they saw as murderers.

Today in Cavan in the Republic, not far from the Ulster border,  The Supremo of the Republic's Garda and the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland shared a platform. The audience was made up of British MPs, members of the Northern Ireland Assembly including Ulster Unionists, DUP and Sinn Fein and members of all parties in Dail Eireann.

The talk was about co-operation across the border. The atmosphere was tolerant, respectful and practical Policing throughout the Island of Ireland is now working against criminals not separating warring communities.

Happily, 20 years is a long time in politics.

Grave politics

The things politicians have to do.

"Five?"  I asked in astonishment. A member of Dail Eireann told me "Of course, you don't have to do this in your country? But, yes, I attended five funerals on Saturday, four on Friday. It's expected".

I recall the late Councillor Jim Kirkwood from Caerleon telling me that a voter told him he was not voting for him, because he did not attend his brother's funeral. "Sorry" said Jim, "Did I know your brother"?  'No you didn't but the Independent Councillor was there. "Did he know your brother?". "No, he didn't.'.

It altered Jim Kirkwood's life. After that, he attended every funeral he heard about. He never lost his seat and serve Caerleon for forty years. 

Badgered

Will they listen?

Another authoritative challenge to the Welsh Assembly's planned slaughter of badgers comes today.

Dr Chris Cheeseman has asked for a re-think. He said the decision "flies in the face of the science" and could make bovine TB worse.

Dr Cheeseman is the retired head of wildlife diseases research at the Central Science Laboratory. The ten year Krebs inquiry slaughtered thousands of badgers and concluded  that evidence indicated badgers would move out of the area and settle elsewhere, potentially taking the infection with them.

Sadly sound science comes second  to giving in to farmers' demands. 

P.S.

A sketchwriter sent me a text today. As a post script he said that 10 Downing Street had sent his newsroom  a message,' If you don't stop going on about bullying at No 10, we'll come across and smack you in the mouth.'

Mail's distortions and untruths.

The Mail on Sunday's headline presentation of my book is a travesty. Nowhere do I denounce 'most MPs'. The book has many affectionate tributes to admired colleagues. I was warned by Chris Mullin about the 'headlines'. I saw the intended extracts but not the untrue headlines. They attacked the Council of Europe this morning. In my book I did balance my criticism of some of the excesses of a few of its  members with praise of the majority. 

"It was a pleasant surprise to discover that most COE UK delegates 

were serious and hard working. Some were drunks and expenses gluttons 

who behaved scandalously. But they were irrelevant to the political 

panjandrum of the COE’s progress to promote human rights. Debating 

and legislating with MPs from 47 other countries is a bewildering but 

rewarding stimulus. There are the repeated absorbing clashes of cultures, 

ideologies and languages. At best it’s an exotic revealing window into alien 

ideas. At worse, it’s a collision with an impenetrable cliff of ignorance and 

prejudice. 

There are often new insights on domestic policies when viewed from 

abroad. I was once told, ‘Your government’s policy on asylum seekers is 

crazy.’ My informant told me his constituents are milking our system. 

‘They rent out their homes for a year, continue to receive social security 

payments here, then go to Britain and get another income there.’ 

My prize for courage goes to Lord Judd for standing up to the abuse, 

curses and threats from Russians over Chechnya. As Frank Judd, he 

was a minister in Harold Wilson’s government and later ran Oxfam. In 

Strasbourg he was the truthful voice on the dreadful Russian atrocities 

in Chechnya. Frank remained steadfast against a united attack from the 

post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States politicians and the 

Russian media. He was called a liar and accused of taking bribes from 

the Chechens. While many politicians from Eastern Europe are subtle 

and of high quality, their politics are still marked by the brutal imprint of 

their communist past. 

The strength of the Council of Europe is the knowledge of members. We 

meet socially, dine together and know each other’s characters intimately. 

Frank is known to possess saintly integrity beyond the reach of any form 

of corruption. In Moscow he became a media hate figure. In Chechnya he 

will be long remembered as a brave politician whose testimony lightened 

their terrible burdens." 

 

 Liverpool MP Eddie O’Hara stunned his fellow Brits into admiration on a visit to Crete. 

The apres-meeting event was a dinner in a club. The always sober Eddie 

took over the microphone and told the appreciative audience a joke – in 

Greek. He followed that with a half an hour singing popular Greek songs 

in his pleasant light baritone voice. Fellow Europeans were impressed. 

They are resigned to their view of Brits as monoglot language cretins. 

Eddie was the brilliant exception. He is also acquainted with ancient 

Greek. Before he became an MP he was a teacher of teachers. Eddie is 

unknown in the UK. In Greece, he is a legend. 

The British contribution to the COE and the WEU peaked with 

the election of the splendid Birmingham MP Terry Davis as Secretary 

General in 2004. In his five-year tenure he has done a magnificent job. In 

his acceptance speech, he affirmed the highest ambitions of the Council 

and especially its British members. 

" I have a vision of Europe as part of a world where men and women 

are treated fairly and equally, a Europe where people live in peace 

on the basis of mutual respect without any discrimination based on 

gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin or religious belief a Europe 

with no borders, no visas, no passports - a Europe where people have 

the time and opportunity to enjoy not only their own culture but the 

cultures of other people. The Council of Europe is the best way to turn 

that vision into reality. "

Within days of Terry standing down at the end of a four-year term, 

the reforms he introduced were being dismantled by an institution that 

was deeply hostile to Anglo-Saxon ways. A linguistic fog and national self 

interests confined the Europe-wide stages of the COE and the WEU. 

But contemporary politicians now enjoy new platforms, without 

boundaries or limits, in the novel world of cyberspace. "

From 'The Unusual Suspect' 

Dutch wisdom

 

 

No one can blame the Dutch for turning against the futile deaths of their brave soldiers in Afghanistan. They have paid the price in blood and treasure in the same way that we, the Americans and Canadians have done.

Unlike Georgia and the Baltic Sates, the Netherlands has no covert agenda in buttering up NATO nations. If the breakdown of the Dutch coalition forces a General Election, the voters can make their voices heard. The result is likely to be more support for the anti-war sentiments of both left and right. A new coalition committed to withdrawing troops is  very likely.

In numbers the withdrawal of Dutch troops  will not be a severe blow to NATO. In morale it could be a mortal strike. Already NATO is divided between the nations named above who do the dying and France, Germany, Spain and Italy who do the policing.

In my constituency I continue to take a high profile in defending the interests of our troops and urging an early deal that will reduce future deaths. Not only is that the right policy, it is proving on the doorstep to be the popular policy.

 

Not expenses again!

This is breath-taking. An outfit named ‘docmail’ has written to me about my expenses. They have a proposal that they claim will save the Government ‘£254,286’ on postage.  Maybe so. But why write to me?

They have done an analysis of how much MPs spend on postage. In horror they asked me ‘Did you know that you have the 601^st highest spend on postage of of all 635 registered MPs?’ No, I didn’t. Put another way that means that there are 600 MPs spending more than I do and 34 spending less. As with second home payments, I am bargain, good value MP.

The government is not going to save much if I sign up to ‘docmail.’ Easier and better to continue setting a good example.

 

Wrong book

A friend rang to say they she has ordered my new book on Amazon. 'It is called 'How to be an MP', isn't it"? she asked. No. It's not. It's called 'The Unusual Suspect.' The book she mentioned was planned but publication has been postponed while I find out how to be an MP after the convulsion of new rules that are coming.

Obama joins nuclear madness

Well, nobody’s perfect. But it’s disappointing seeing Obama being bewitched by the nuclear deceivers. He is following the UK in claiming ‘no subsidies’ to nuclear then doling out $millions in disguised hand-outs.

A writer in Time magazine offers this explanation for why the USA has not built a nuclear reactor in 30 years. ‘The Vogtle plant in Georgia’s original cost was estimated at less than a $1billion for four reactors. It eventually cost $9billion for two reactors.

But now there's widespread chatter about a nuclear renaissance, so the Southern Co. is finally trying to build the other two reactors at Vogtle. (see local fish caught at Vogtle!) The estimated cost: $14 billion. And you can be sure that number is way too low, because nuclear cost estimates are always way too low.’

In spite of the evidence on all sides we continue to plan on the same delusion.Would someone please notice that the only New-Nuclear plant in the world in Finland is three years late in construction and €2 billion over budget? No nuclear power station in the world has been built on time or on budget. Thatcher promised to build ten and built one.

Will the new Government’s plans suffer a similar fate?

 

Worse than a pandemic

The world was frightened witless. Governments spent billions on vaccines. The priorities of health services throughout the world were distorted. All for a scare about swine flu that was greatly exaggerated.

I have the fascinating task of writing a report for the Council of Europe analyzing the genesis of what may have be a false pandemic.   A colleague from the German Parliament, epidemiologist Wolfgang Wodarg, believes that the pharmaceutical industry influenced the decision to announce in June 2009 that swine flu was a scale six pandemic. National governments reacted with frightening threats. UK health supremo Liam Donaldson talked of 65,000 deaths. Now we know that 410 people here died with swine flu but only about 80 died of Swine flu.

The rest had other medical conditions. Although all unexpected deaths are tragic, the figures prove that the seasonal flu that afflicts us every year is about ten times more lethal than swine flu. I asked Health Secretary Andy Burnham in the Commons if unscientific exaggeration cost the country dearly, financially, in stress and distorted NHS priorities. Andy replied, "I would make no apology for making all the necessary preparations to keep the public safe through that. And I think we have come through the pandemic because of the strength of the plans and the preparations that this Government put in place."

Andy is right in that Governments would be damned if they took expensive precautions and they would have been damned if they had not and the virus had mutated causing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. There is some evidence that a former health secretary Alan Johnson tried to dampen down the fear mongering of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

 Preliminary findings indicate that not all of the 47 countries of the Council of Europe took the WHO’s warning as seriously as we did. The Government is considering selling or giving away some of the surplus doses of swine flu vaccine it has stockpiled. We bought 23.9 million doses of vaccine from drug manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline and five million from rival company Baxter. NHS workers were instructed to take the vaccine as part of their duty of care.

 

As with all vaccines adverse reactions were suffered by a small number of recipients. As most of those who had swine flu did not feel ill in any way, there is a serious question on whether the vaccine was a greater risk than the flu.

As rapporteur I held a hearing in Strasbourg in January. Keiji Fukuda, of WHO responded to allegations that WHO had “faked” a pandemic on the basis of overly close ties with companies that make influenza vaccines and treatments. Wolfgang Wodarg told the hearing that around $18 billion had been spent on the pandemic worldwide and that millions were vaccinated “for no good reason.” According to Wodarg, “The definition of a pandemic was changed by the WHO last May. It was only this change of definition which made it possible to transform a run-of-the-mill flu into a worldwide pandemic – and made it possible for the pharmaceutical industry to transform this opportunity into cash, under contracts which were mainly secret.”

 

Eulrich Keil, director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Epidemiology at the University of Munster said, “We are witnessing a gigantic misallocation of resources in terms of public health.”

Neil Rau, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Toronto, argued the WHO had made a subtle but important change in its definition of pandemic. “It dropped the key requirements that a pandemic virus had to be completely novel – an antigenic shift – and cause widespread and severe disease,” they wrote. “Almost immediately, as luck had it, a virus appeared that fit the new pandemic definition – but not the old one.”

The Canadian doctors said that when the risks from the disease evaporated, instead of spreading this good news their Government exaggerated the risk, “to justify ongoing futile vaccination efforts directed at the worried well.”

Health journalist, Jeremy Laurance in the Lancet has suggested swine flu may turn out to be “the weakest pandemic in history. If it turns out that we have used a sledgehammer to crack a nut, my question is this: how did the virologists get the scale of the threat so wrong?”

The world has been alarmed by four recent major scares, SARS, CJD/BSE, Avian Flu and Swine flu. All were potential mass killers. Mercifully none killed on the scale of the Spanish flu of 1918. Was the WHO scare based on independent epidemiological evidence or was it influenced by the needs of the vaccine manufacturers to get a return for their vast investments? Answers must be found.

JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association has detailed examples from across the globe in which trust in the safety of vaccines has been dented, often to the detriment of public health. Vaccines have saved millions of lives and eliminated the scourge of several major diseases. A collapse of trust in the WHO and vaccines worldwide is a greater threat to health than any pandemic.

Declaration against War.

The poet Siegfried Sassoon risked arrest for treason when he read his declaration against war in the House of Commons in 1917. He was then a serving soldier in the hell of the First World War.

The words were read by the past Childrens' Laureate Michael Monpurgo in a Commons Committee Room in December 2009. I later read them in the Chamber. The message precisely describes the current situation in Afghanistan. Again there are those who have the power to end the bloodshed who are prolonging the war - waiting to find an exit strategy that can be spun as a victory. Meanwhile lives are lost in futile conflict.