Starmer signs treaty giving WHO power to recommend lockdowns
Sir Keir Starmer has signed an international pandemic treaty that gives the World Health Organisation (WHO) the power to recommend lockdowns.
The UK is one of dozens of countries to join the agreement, designed to help the body co-ordinate the international response to any future pandemics.
The treaty has wide-ranging implications for how the world would deal with a Covid-style outbreak, including by encouraging better disease surveillance and the sharing of vaccines and other medicines.
The WHO said it was a 'victory for public health, science and multilateral action' and would 'better protect the world from future pandemic threats'.
However, critics said it would give the organisation too much control and influence, including by recommending specific policies like lockdowns and mask mandates.
The treaty explicitly rules out the WHO holding 'any authority to direct, order, alter or otherwise prescribe' any policy, or to 'impose any requirements that parties take specific actions'.
It will not prevent the UK from following its own pandemic response, and cannot legally bind ministers to a particular strategy.
However, opponents said the treaty risked allowing 'unelected' health officials to influence policy in the UK.
Donald Trump's administration, which has not signed up to the treaty, announced earlier this year that the US would be withdrawing from the WHO.
On Tuesday, in a video played to health officials during a summit in Geneva, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Mr Trump's health secretary, said other nations should see the US's exit as a 'wake-up call'.
He added: 'We've already been in contact with like-minded countries, and we encourage others to consider joining us.'
WHO 'in thrall to Chinese communists'
Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, told The Telegraph: 'Labour's decision to ratify the WHO pandemic treaty is yet another unforgivable surrender of British sovereignty, freedom and democracy.
'It hands more powers to a discredited global health body that has shown time and again it is in thrall to the Chinese Communist Party, the very regime that covered up the origins of Covid-19 and silenced whistleblowers while the virus spread across the globe.'
Lord Frost, the Conservative peer, said it was 'very regrettable' that Britain had signed the treaty 'quietly and hoping no one will notice'.
'This new international law commitment will tie this and future governments to WHO decisions, including potentially on future lockdowns,' he said.
'No doubt they will try to argue that they are not bound by the WHO, but their legal advisers, directed by the Attorney General, will argue that they have no choice.'
Critics 'spreading misinformation'
Speaking at the summit, Tedros Ghebreyesus, the WHO's director-general, accused critics of the deal of spreading misinformation.
He said: 'It will not infringe on national sovereignty in any way nor give the WHO secretariat power to impose mask or vaccine mandate or lockdowns.
'You're all aware of the torrent of mis- and disinformation that we have faced through the negotiation of this agreement.'
The deal follows three years of negotiations over what strategy the WHO should pursue in the event of a future pandemic.
Some countries objected to a clause that said pharmaceutical companies must quickly give the WHO vaccines, medicines and diagnostics, ' targeting 20 per cent ' of what is produced. Of that, 10 per cent must be donated for free.
On Tuesday, Baroness Chapman, a Foreign Office minister, said the treaty was a 'great example of the UK working with our partners to support countries to combat disease and strengthen their health systems'.
However, Molly Kingsley, a health campaigner, said that while it could not override national law, it referred to the WHO as the 'directing and co-ordinating authority'.
She said this suggested that in a public health emergency 'recommendations or directions given by the WHO and its director-general are likely to be followed by member states.'
Ms Kingsley added: 'The combined impact of this agreement and the parallel international health regulations is to further enmesh the UK into an international pandemic management framework led by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats without any meaningful public or parliamentary scrutiny or debate having taken place.'
'Recommendations are not obligations'
A WHO spokesman said: 'It is blatantly false to suggest the WHO pandemic agreement, adopted by the UK and other governments at the World Health Assembly this week, impacts any country's sovereignty in any way.
'In fact, the opposite is true. National sovereignty on health decision-making is reaffirmed by the pandemic agreement.'
They added: 'It is perplexing that issue is being raised on whether WHO should be able to make recommendations.
'Recommendations are not obligations. Under the WHO Constitution, the UK and other WHO member states have assigned WHO to serve as the 'directing and coordinating authority on international health work' – this is not new and does not in the least touch on national sovereignty.'
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