Added the government would not support an invasion of rafah unless it saw a plan to protect civilians. Is speaking at the National Cyber security centre, the foreign secretary urged fellow nato members to increase their spending on defence to 2. 5 of gdp. More than 9000 migrants have crossed the engush migrants have crossed the English Channel in small boats this year. Official figures show. 250 people made the journey in two small boats since monday, taking the tally to 2024 to almost 8800. However, gb news can confirm another three small boats arrived on thursday, making the current total 35 higher than at the same time last year. It comes after a home office u turn on the publication of the number of small boat migrants being prevented from making the illegal journey by french police. Labours new mp, french police. Labours new mp, Natalie Elphicke, apologised for comments she made about sexual assault. The mp for dover announced her defection from the tories to labour just moments before Prime Ministers questions yesterday, but its ignhed questions yesterday, but its ignited a backlash amongst some labour mps after comments miss elphicke made in defence of her former partner , who was former partner, who was convicted of assaulting two women. And stormy daniels, has been accused of profiting from a story involving a sexual encounter with donald trump as lawyers sought to undermine her credibility as a witness. The encounters, now at the centre of the former president s so called hush money trial, mrs. Daniels says she signed a statement denying an affair with mr trump because she was told she had to. Her lawyer has previously argued that the statement was designed to be technically accurate by denying an affair without denying an affair without denying an affair without denying a sexual encounter. Mr trump denies any wrongdoing, and the case continues. You can get the case continues. You can get the latest on all of our stories by signing up to gb news alerts. The qr codes on your screen or our website has more details. Now its back to. Jacob. Now its back to. Jacob. Welcome back to state of the nafion welcome back to state of the nation. Today, i want to use the nation. Today, i want to use the news that astrazeneca has begun a worldwide withdrawal of its covid vaccine. Talk to you about the importance of honesty frankness in government. Astrazeneca has said the withdrawal was a commercial decision, but whatever the truth , the move has come only days after the company admitted for the first time that its vaccine could, in very rare cases, cause fatal blood clots. I firmly believe the rollout of the vaccine was the right decision. It was an intervention that saved many lives and helped pave the road out of lockdown. The road out of lockdown. However, the government labelled the vaccine as safe and effective and those who did not want to take it were threatened with the loss of basic freedoms and liberties. The vaccine was and liberties. The vaccine was and remains for the overwhelming majority of the population , majority of the population, safe. Yet weve always known that all medical interventions carry some form of risk. We know it now and we knew it then and these were downplayed. So these were downplayed. So regardless of how rigorous the safety regulations were , the safety regulations were, the vaccine was new and lacked long term data. While the rollout was, on the whole successful, we now know that they were not as effective as we first hoped, and although the side effects were rare, they were real. A well intentioned government was using an element of coercion to increase vaccine take up and therefore the second order effects of a lack of transparency have been damaging to confidence and have encouraged some of the conspiracy theories. So while overegging the pudding may solve a problem in the short term, it can create more in the long term. This is true in Human Affairs generally from personal lives to the administration of nafions lives to the administration of nations and empires, and the more government is shown to lack frankness, the less cooperation it will ultimately secure from a population. And this could have very serious consequences if, for example, in contagion, more serious , more deadly than covid serious, more deadly than covid i9 serious, more deadly than covid 19 were to hit these shores , 19 were to hit these shores, people would be less likely to listen to what the governments say. And it encourages, as i mentioned, conspiracy theories. Many people write to me about these conspiracy theories of things that really werent happening. But when the risks are downplayed, people are more likely to believe in it. And the danger of conspiracy theorists and these theories is it encourages people to assume that the truth is routinely hidden from it, and that nothing is as it seems, which isnt generally true , partly because governments true, partly because governments arent clever enough, but it ends up being calamitous because its so negative and it lowers trust in society as a whole and a high level of social trust is essential for a healthy and prosperous society. So authorities should learn from this and should refrain from using the Covid Response as a model for future crises. Individuals should be given the facts , the risks, as well as the facts, the risks, as well as the good information to allow them to make their own choices. We should never have those sorts of lockdowns that people were terrified into. Parents must never again be banned from their childrens funerals. And this goes for national government, as well as bodies such as the world health organisation. And on the topic of the who, the government is absolutely right to refuse to sign up to its pandemic treaty, which would see us bound to share medical suppuesin us bound to share medical supplies in a global stockpile, undermining our National Sovereignty and giving it to a body that just dismissed the risk of the covid coming from wuhan and from a laboratory in wuhan, just dismissed it out of hand as an unreliable body to start with. In 2016, people voted for National Sovereignty when they chose to leave the european union. They dont want to give it up to a bunch of bureaucrats in the who. Enacting the will of the people is a step in the right direction for the restoration of trust and honesty and accountability in politics as ever. Let me know your thoughts. Mal margaret gb news comm. But joining me now is news comm. But joining me now is professor david strain, the associate professor in Cardiometabolic Health at the university of exeter. And professor, thank you very much for joining me. Very grateful forjoining me. Very grateful forjoining me. Very grateful for your time , the risks of the for your time, the risks of the vaccine are still very, very low, arent they . They are absolutely. And this they are absolutely. And this is a really important consideration here. Its approximately 1 to 2 in every 100,000 patients who received that vaccine of getting the blood clots. And actually, we still dont know whether the problem was inherent with the vaccine technology. This adenoviral vector that basically you put a bit of the protein inside another virus and you spread that round, or whether its the protein itself , because its the protein itself, because we know that if you caught covid at the time this vaccine was being rolled out, you were 300 more, 300 times more likely to develop the same blood clots that you got from the vaccine. So this was a risk. But the problem was that something that happens 1 in 100,000 times or 2 in 100,000 times, was never going to be picked up in the sort of studies that were required to do the 50,000 people in a trial. In a trial. But do you think that the government was too optimistic that it gave the impression that there was virtually no risk . And also when it came to deciding to vaccinate children for whom the risk of covid was so low , so no risk of covid was so low, so no one really went through the balance of risks as the vaccine was being rolled out. Was being rolled out. So using the word safe with any medicine is always a dangerous thing to do. We never know the full risks. If you give a drug for 50,000 people in a trial, we have no idea of risks that are going to be one in 1 million or 1 in even be one in 1 million or1 in even 1 in 100,000. We just wont pick them up in those trials. However it was all about balancing the risk at the time of covid versus the risk that had been demonstrated with the vaccine. Youve got to remember at the time that this was taking place, i was looking after Covid Patients and i was seeing more deaths in a week than id seen in a 12 month period. As a typical consultant. So this was something that was killing people at a rate that we hadnt seen. When it comes to vaccinate , 90 seen. When it comes to vaccinate , go on. So thats thats so important that the risk for people who are elderly or were ill in some way was absolutely negligible compared to the benefit, and millions of lives were saved by astrazeneca. Its crucial to remember that, isnt it . Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, the figures by i mean this this was groundbreaking research. It was really well supported by the British Government. And we did a tremendous job of getting that into peoples arm faster than anyone else in the world, its estimated that this vaccine alone has saved about 6. 5 million lives around the world. And the uk has a lot to be proud of. Here we have the Ground Breaking research. Then as the factors came, came out as it became apparent that this vaccine was associated with the clots, however rare, and it was decided or determined that that was more so in the younger people. We were also the first people. We were also the first to act. We stopped the vaccination for this astrazeneca vaccine for anybody under the age of 40, where the risk was deemed to be higher , and we used deemed to be higher, and we used alternative vaccine strategies for those people. So this was a for those people. So this was a all a balance of risk versus benefit. And at the time, i firmly believe the decisions that were made were right. But now that vaccine is no longer relevant. Its a vaccine against a version of a virus that isnt in circulation anymore, that the difference between covid thats circulating now and that original covid is massive. Its actually bigger than the difference between the original covid and the sars epidemic in, in china in 2012. So the vaccine itself is now not relevant to the covid. Its in circulation , the covid. Its in circulation, so its entirely appropriate. Its being withdrawn. What do you think administrators should learn from this experience and from the admission that it did create the clotting . Create the clotting . Because i know that as a constituency mp , my mailbag will constituency mp, my mailbag will now, get quite a few letters from people saying, look, i told you so. And my worry is that the pr around the vaccine was too positive early on, which is very helpful to the conspiracy theorists. Now absolutely. I mean, when the vaccine was first launched, its primary aim was to stop people dying, stop people ending up in itu. It was then also touted itu. It was then also touted that it would stop infection spreading and that played a massive part in the need to get it. You know, you have to have this to reduce its spreading. Well, that was never actually tested in the studies. I think its really important we come up front and we say, look , this is front and we say, look, this is a vaccine that is designed to stop people from dying. It does stop people from dying. It does reduce spread, but nowhere near as much as we originally hoped for. And by the time we were on our third or fourth variant, by the time we went through alpha delta and omicron, it wasnt preventing the spread, but it still has kept people out of hospital. And thats the important thing. Its all about honesty. Its about saying that honesty. Its about saying that this is a vaccine that has saved millions of lives. It did come with a very small risk. The word safe should never be used with any new medication, irrespective of whether thats a vaccine or a new drug for diabetes, Heart Disease or whatever. You care to mention. Until weve had it for a few years. A few years. And its a balance of risks, isnt it . And that actually governments, administrators and the population at large arent brilliant at judging the balance of risks. And the only bit of the rollout i was concerned about when it was being given to School Children who seemed to have such a low risk from covid itself, and yet it became partly because of the mistake about reducing spread or reducing spread significantly. It became spread significantly. It became part of the policy, even though this wasnt going to help children. And i thought the risks then werent being weighed up properly. So its important to say that the zeneca vaccine was never given to children , we already given to children, we already were aware of the blood clotting problems in people under the age of 40. So this particular vaccine was never given to children. The decision to give the vaccination to children was based on the time, on two principles. Youve got to remember that covid, although it had a very low risk in children, was still the number one cause of death of children in the uk and in the states in 2020 and 2021. So although it was a very low risk, it was not a negligible risk. The other thing is, by the time that decision was made, it was clear that although the vaccine doesnt stop, spread it, reduce spread by about 30 to 40. And as our children getting back to school, which was absolutely essential, we got them back into that mixing phase, into school. We knew that schools become well, they become a petri dish for virals. Any parent knows that virals. Any parent knows that their children regularly bring home all sorts of infections. And so just reducing the infection risk by a third, increase the risk or increase the chance of those children growing up with two parents and full sets of grandparents. However, the Principal Risk reason for vaccinating children was all about this very low but not insignificant risk of death due to covid and of course, long covid. We still have around 120,000 children in the uk that are not participating with school normally because of the prolonged effects of this virus, and 120,000 doesnt sound like a lot, but thats a lot of children. Its about in every other classroom that were seeing here, and we know the vaccine did reduce the risk of that by over 50. So overall, we should be really proud of astrazeneca. They saved 6. 5 million lives. It was a Great BritishSuccess Story. The economy opened up story. The economy opened up earlier. Perhaps the pr should be should have been a little bit more cautious. But in the grand scheme of things, the errors were relatively minor and the uk government did a tremendous job of getting behind the whole Vaccination Programme from start to finish, to give these, the Oxford University and the companies the confidence to explore this, not just astrazeneca , but the other astrazeneca, but the other companies who had the vaccines that didnt work without that original support to say we will underwrite these vaccines to get us out of the pandemic, to get us out of the pandemic, to get us out of lockdown, to get us back to a position where we can be in a room together. That was a tremendous Success Story of both the British Government underwriting this. So the National Health service that got this into the arm quicker than any other Health Service in the world. Well, thank you so much for joining me this evening. Im very grateful for your time. And we have a statement, a few words from astrazeneca. According to from astrazeneca. According to independent estimates, over 6. 5 million lives were saved in the first year of use alone and over 3 billion doses were supplied globally as multiple variants. Covid 19 vaccines have since been developed. There is a surplus of available updated vaccines. This has led to a decline in demand for vaxzevria, which is no longer being manufactured or supplied well. Coming up, John Mcternan is going to try and convince me to defect to labour. Plus your taxes will be going up no matter who wins the election. Not. Well, we were talking about astrazeneca and the covid vaccine. And youve been sending in your views. Mick says the government is right not to sign up to the who. Deal. The w. H. O. Is up to the who. Deal. The who. Is in the pockets of china, and we should still well clear of them. Robert, the covid vaccines were needed, but they were rushed out for obvious reasons. Therefore they carried risk. People must always be given the right to refuse them, and yet the pressure to be jabbed is still being exerted. Thats a very fair point. Well, yesterday the member of parliament for dover sent shockwaves through the palace of westminster as she crossed the floor and defected to the labour party. It seems now like a distant memory. Party. It seems now like a distant memory. When the now distant memory. When the now labour member a year ago was making remarks such as these dont trust labour on immigration, they really want open borders, or the facts are clear. Labour do not want to stop the boats tonight. They stop the boats tonight. They have sided with criminal gangs and those who exploit our system and those who exploit our system and law. But it seems just about anyone can join the labour party these days. Former tony blair adviserJohn Mcternan had this to say on newsnight last night. Is there any tory mp that you wouldnt welcome in the party . Id love Jacob Rees Mogg to be a member of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Labour party. Well, the labour party has seemingly drawn the line at allowing nigel farage into the party. However, im joined now by the man himself, party. However, im joined now by the man himself , john by the man himself, John Mcternan. John, thank you very much for joining mcternan. John, thank you very much forjoining me , some people much forjoining me, some people in the labour party are very cross with you for saying this, even though it seemed to me you were qui