§ 3.45 p.m.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS BOROUGHMy Lords, may I ask the noble Lord, Lord Newton, whether he will answer my Private Notice Question on the present position in relation to the outbreak of smallpox?
§ LORD NEWTONYes, my Lords. It may be for the convenience of the House if I repeat to your Lordships the statement which my right honourable friend the Minister of Health, has just made in another place:
"Five persons infected with smallpox are known to have arrived at London Airport from Pakistan between 853 December 16 and January 11. All five had valid international certificates of recent revaccination. So far as is known, there have been no secondary cases to date from three of these persons and only one from the fourth. The fifth was a girl of nine who had been successfully vaccinated in infancy. She arrived on December 16, was admitted to Bradford Children's Hospital on December 23, with malaria, and died on December 30 with no clinical sign of smallpox, which was deduced on January 11 as soon as secondary cases occurred among her contacts in the hospital. Ten of these have been confirmed so far and two are suspected; four have died. All known contacts have been vaccinated and placed under medical surveillance."
§ LORD SHEPHERDMy Lords, may I ask the noble Lord a question? He said that five Pakistanis have come into this country with vaccination certificates that were not valid?
§ LORD NEWTONWith certificates that were valid.
§ LORD STONHAMMy Lords, may I ask whether that answer means that all such immigrants are examined to see whether they have available vaccination certificates, and does it mean that if they have not they are excluded?
§ LORD NEWTONNo, my Lords. The position is that we in this country have never put into force Article 83 of the International Sanitary Regulations of 1951, which says:
A health administration may require any person on an international voyage who does not show sufficient evidence of protection by a previous attack of smallpox to possess on arrival a valid certificate of vaccination against smallpox.The Article then provides that a valid certificate shall be considered as evidence of sufficient protection. But I explained earlier this afternoon, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Colwyn, that in the Government's view better protection is normally afforded by a system of warning and follow-up.
§ ViscouNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGHMy Lords, might I ask whether the Government intend to proceed any further with examination of the general circumstances in relation to 854 this question, to accommodate the people among the population who are pressing hard for a system of certificates of health, with regard not only to vaccination against smallpox but to other matters (such as are required, for example, in the United States, where a certificate should be not more than three years old) and to see whether anything has happened at all in this outbreak which would make the Government wish to depart from their present system?
§ LORD NEWTONMy Lords, I am sure that my right honourable friend will consider all these matters as the result of the outbreaks of smallpox in this country. But he is not of the view that so far as smallpox is concerned these international certificates serve any really useful purpose.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS BOROUGHMy Lords, may I ask, whether or not with regard to the measure of agreement in Europe upon this matter, effective steps have now been taken to prevent people from a smallpox infected area from coming through the usual procedure—say through France—without having any check upon them? Has it been found that they have got in through other territories en route and have then come through France, thus escaping what would be the normal check upon people from these areas?
§ LORD NEWTONMy Lords, steps are taken to discover whether or not people who come to this country originated from what are recognised as infected areas. The controls now in operation are believed to be more stringent than are in force anywhere else, and so far as we are aware all of these five cases would have entered any other country under the controls which they operate.
§ LORD STONHAMMy Lords, can the noble Lord say when it was discovered that these five suspects had valid vaccination certificates? Was it on entry, or when they were found to be smallpox suspects? Can he further enlarge on his statement that these international certificates are of little use?
§ LORD NEWTONMy Lords, the answer to the first question is, I think, on entry. There are two reasons why 855 we in this country have not put into effect the provisions of Article 83—that is the one which concerns these international certificates. The first is that vaccination is not compulsory for our own people since the repeal of the Vaccination Acts; and secondly, the majority of people producing international certificates will do so as evidence of revaccination. The certificate, while it shows that the person has been vaccinated, does not give any evidence of successful revaccination—that is to say, there is no guarantee that the revaccination has taken.
§ LORD TAYLORMy Lords, in the case of these five people was there any evidence, apart from the international certificate, that they had in fact been vaccinated recently?
§ LORD NEWTONNo, my Lords, I do not think there was.
§ LORD TAYLORMy Lords, is it not a most scandalous state of affairs, and should we not draw the attention of the Government of Pakistan to the fact that certificates appear to be issued by doctors in Pakistan without the persons' being vaccinated?
§ LORD NEWTONMy Lords, I recognise that that is a view which is taken, but I think it is something which is very difficult to prove.
§ BARONESS SUMMERSKILLMy Lords, I have visited Pakistan and I know Karachi. Is it not the fact that the number of qualified doctors in these Eastern countries is so limited that it is completely unrealistic for noble Lords to ask for certificates? One doubts whether the doctors who for the most part treat these people are qualified in our sense of the word to vaccinate, and therefore we cannot really talk about this matter as though it had a British background in regard to medicine. If you ask all these people to have a certificate of vaccination it simply means that you are limiting immigration in that way.
§ LORD TAYLORMy Lords, before the noble Lord replies, I did not ask for these certificates. The only people who 856 asked apparently were the immigration authorities, quite reasonably, and these ladies and gentlemen produced them.
§ BARONESS SUMMERSKILLThey are forgeries.
§ LORD TAYLORMy noble friend says they are all forgeries. That was exactly what I was complaining about. If they are forgeries, then it is a most scandalous state of affairs.
§ BARONESS SUMMERSKILLThey have not got the doctors.
§ LORD TAYLORThis is extraordinary.
§ LORD NEWTONMy Lords, all five immigrants from Pakistan had the international certificates and they were valid —that is to say, in the judgment of those who examined them they were not forgeries. But, as I have said several times, we in this country do not require people coming into the country to produce these documents. As I said before, we do not think that they serve a very useful purpose.
§ LORD STONHAMMy Lords, to be quite fair to the Pakistani doctors, is the noble Lord aware that many of the doctors who are now busily vaccinating people in Britain are from Pakistan?
§ LORD NEWTONMy Lords, far be it for me to intervene between the trilogy of noble Lords and the noble Lady opposite.
LORD REAMy Lords, is the noble Lord aware that in one sense the situation is going rather in reverse? Not only is Pakistan looked upon as an infected area, but Britain is looked upon by other countries as an infected area. Can he tell us what steps are being taken in regard to that? Are people who wish to go abroad to be asked for a special certificate?
§ LORD NEWTONMy Lords, I am sure that it is not for us to stop people from leaving these shores if they want to. What we want to do is to make certain that we do not allow into this country people who have already been infected.