New powers could potentially plunge Britain, the US and Australia into lockdown measures at the whim of the World Health Organization, it was claimed today.
The UN agency – heavily criticised for how it handled Covid – is considering 300 amendments to its legally-binding rulebook.
One of the measures floated, MPs and campaigners fear, opens the door for member states to made to comply with any advice issued during future pandemics, such as enforcing vaccine passports and border closures.
It states that countries vow to ‘undertake to follow WHO’s recommendations in their international public health response’.
Critics today described the proposal – which still has to be voted on before ever cropping up in real-world policy – as an ‘unprecedented land grab’.
Member states would also have to use 5 per cent of health budgets on preparing for another pandemic if controversial proposals are given the go ahead.
Six Tory MPs have now written to the Foreign Office, demanding it blocks any new powers that could see the WHO dictate policy and budgets in the UK.
Ex-Cabinet minister Esther McVey warned the powers would see the organisation, described as China’s puppet by critics, move from a ‘member-led advisory body to a health authority with powers of compulsion’.
In response to the fears, the Government insisted it ‘would never agree to anything that crosses our points of principle on sovereignty’.
But Molly Kingsley, founder of UsForThem, which campaigned against school closures and masks in classrooms during the pandemic, said: ‘The Government have come back and said, well actually we’re quite worried too.
‘And they’re right to be because this is a really, really unprecedented land grab by the WHO.’
She told Talk TV: ‘What the proposals do is change what is currently guidance that the WHO gives to binding recommendations.
‘And that includes binding recommendations over things like lockdown, mandatory vaccination, quarantine, isolation and restrictions on travel.’
Ms Kingsley added: ‘You have to ask, who is the WHO to be granting themselves powers?’
The powers are being considered as part of an update to the WHO International Health Regulations (IHR) 2005, which sets out obligations for its 194 member states to prepare for and respond to outbreaks and other public health risks.
Among the 308 suggested changes are proposals to create a ‘legally binding’ response to public health emergencies, The Telegraph reported.
This amendment, suggested by African nations, states that the current wording of the IHR — that countries ‘should’ respond to health risks — is ‘weak’.
The exact wording is in relation to getting the WHO to coordinate sharing drugs, tests, PPE and vaccines across the planet.
Yet the wording of another amendment proposes that: ‘Parties recognize WHO as the guidance and coordinating authority of international public health response during public health Emergency of International Concern and undertake to follow WHO’s recommendations in their international public health response.’
Ms Kingsley said this would effectively amount to making any WHO recommendations legally-binding.
In parallel, the agency is also working on a pandemic preparedness treaty.
WHO chiefs say both instruments will make the world safer from health threats, with another crisis feared to be lurking around the corner.
Bosses of the organisation are whittling down the suggested amendments, before a vote next spring decides whether they will come into force.
At a four-day meeting last month, the WHO discussed a third of the proposed amendments while being ‘mindful’ of each nation’s ‘equity, sovereignty and solidarity’.
The IHR working group is set to meet again in July, October and December and will agree on an amendments package to present to the World Health Assembly (WHA) in May next year, where a majority vote among member states decides whether they should be adopted.