A Labour minister is facing mounting questions over claims he played down intelligence warning the Covid pandemic began from a Chinese lab leak.
Lord Patrick Vallance, the Government’s chief scientific adviser during the crisis, is accused of rubbishing claims in a dossier which warned the virus was engineered in a Wuhan facility.
Revelations about the classified report, submitted to No 10 in March 2020, last night led to growing calls for greater transparency across the UK’s science community.
It also emerged Lord Vallance has continued to downplay the theory for long after the pandemic. Transcripts show he told MPs on the science committee in 2023 it ‘is very, very, very unlikely’ the virus came from a lab.
It has also emerged he collaborated on a paper which stifled debate into the origins of Covid in the early days of the pandemic – despite being aware the lab leak theory was possible.
Luke de Pulford, co-founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said: ‘Vallance has serious questions to answer… We don’t expect our scientific advisers to play at geopolitics, and certainly not when Beijing’s culpability for a virus that killed millions is under scrutiny.’
The Mail on Sunday revealed the report, by former MI6 boss Sir Richard Dearlove, said: ‘It is now beyond reasonable doubt that Covid-19 was engineered in the Wuhan Institute of Virology’. The file argued that China was pushing a false narrative that the virus originated in an animal market.
Sir Richard told the MoS that it appears the ‘scientific establishments in the US and the UK connived to prevent discussion about the origin of the Covid pandemic.’
Lord Patrick Vallance, the Government’s chief scientific adviser during the crisis, is accused of rubbishing claims in a dossier which warned the virus was engineered in a Wuhan facility
This file photo taken on February 23, 2017 shows Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli inside the P4 laboratory in Wuhan
Members of staff of the Wuhan Hygiene Emergency Response Team drive their vehicle as they leave the closed Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the city of Wuhan in January 2020
A source close to former prime minister Boris Johnson pointed the finger at Lord Vallance for rubbishing the lab leak theory, saying: ‘Boris repeatedly asked the [intelligence] agencies to do more work on the origins of Covid… He was struck by the refusal of scientists, especially Patrick Vallance, even to contemplate this possibility.’
The theory is said to have been dismissed by the science community perhaps in fear of offending Beijing and jeopardising research funding.
In January, the US Central Intelligence Agency confirmed it believes Covid is ‘more likely’ to have leaked from a Chinese lab than to have come from animals.
And earlier this week, Berlin’s Federal Intelligence Service said since 2020 it has considered the theory as 80 to 95 per cent likely.
MP Iain Duncan Smith last night said: ‘Every single bit of evidence points to the laboratories… China has silenced all of this and too many scientists are happy to go along with it.’
Calling for an independent inquiry, Sir Iain added: ‘Everybody who denied this has got to answer these questions.’
MP Esther McVey called for a register of interests for scientists, saying: ‘We need to know who received funding from where, and who and what their political allegiances are.’
MP Steve Baker added: ‘Science should be driven by evidence, not a desire to ignore inconvenient hypotheses.’
A source close to former prime minister Boris Johnson pointed the finger at Lord Vallance for rubbishing the lab leak theory
Chief Medical Officer for England Chris Whitty, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and then Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance during a press conference in March 2020
Lord Vallance, the science minister who was the Government’s chief scientific adviser at the time, is accused of ignoring the report, possibly for fear of offending the Chinese or jeopardising research funding
Lord Vallance claims he ‘did not have sight’ of the dossier but alerted the UK National Security Adviser about the lab leak theory when it was first brought to his attention in January 2020.
In the month Sir Richard submitted his report, Lord Vallance was said to have collaborated on a paper which supported Beijing’s narrative of a natural occurrence.
The paper, The Proximal Origin Of SARS-CoV-2, published in Nature Medicine in March 2020, was instrumental in pushing towards a theory that the virus was from a natural origin.
But emails from early 2020 show that the authors held lengthy discussions with experts including Lord Vallance, in which they were warned that China had been carrying out research on bat-coronaviruses at worrying levels of biosecurity.
When the paper was published, the authors dismissed lab leak theory as Covid-19 contained ‘o-glycans’ – sugars which help the immune system – despite this being possible even if the virus had evolved in a lab, and having discussed this in emails.
Lord Vallance pushed this narrative years later in May 2023 while giving evidence to the science, innovation and technology committee, saying: ‘The most likely, from all the evidence that I have seen, is that this is a zoonotic disease that spread from bats.’
A Government spokesman said: ‘Patrick Vallance did not have sight of this dossier, and this theory would have been a matter for the security services, not him.’
