Reform UK: Michelle Ballantyne promotes 'misinformation' on Covid lockdown

The former Tory and sitting MSP posted on both her Twitter and Facebook accounts to promote the website InformScotland.uk, which she said was for “all those out there who want to understand more about the data on Covid”.

Ballantyne said the site would “inform the debate that we really need to have” and offered a “huge thank you” to its publishers.

However, claims made by the website have been labelled “factually incorrect nonsense”.

Some of Scotland’s leading experts on the pandemic told the Sunday National that the anti-science it pushes will have profoundly serious effects and cost lives.

In an article from January 9, InformScotland claims: “[Nicola Sturgeon] has created this idea, which has stuck, that humans generally, and Government specifically, can manage the spread of a virus.”

READ MORE: Michael Russell: Tories must think carefully about associating with Reform UK ideas​

The article, penned by one Christine Padgham, wrongly states that “at least half of people are not susceptible to Covid”.

It also says: “Put simply, there is no evidence that lockdown works to prevent the spread of a virus.”

Ballantyne echoed this sentiment in Holyrood on Wednesday, telling MSPs: “In short, lockdowns don’t do what is claimed of them.”

The January 9 article was also published on Think Scotland, the right-wing think tank founded by entrepreneur Robert Kilgour and edited by former Brexit Party MEP and Tory MSP Brian Monteith.

As well as editing Think Scotland, Monteith is currently working for the Reform Party. On January 18 he had an article published on InformScotland in which he argues for lockdown to be ended.

Another article on InformScotland written by Padgham, a former health physicist and maths tutor, claims: “Covid is not the cause of the current excess deaths: which means other causes are. These other causes are likely to be caused by Covid restrictions.”

This article, published on Think Scotland on December 18 and InformScotland five days later, also claims that the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests used to identify Covid in symptomatic individuals are “not fit for purpose”.

The article claims that PCR tests return so many false positives that Scotland will remain “in a state of perpetual epidemic” unless we stop using them.

In a more recent article, published on both Inform and Think Scotland on January 21, author Jon Dobinson claims Covid restrictions have become like a religion or cult, and that the population is asked to “tremble in fear at the lockdown altar”.

Dobinson claims: “All the evidence shows they are pointless, counterproductive, and incredibly destructive.” He calls for the Government’s Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), a group of 46 experts from institutions across the UK, to be scrapped. He claims the SPI-B has engaged in a “campaign of fear”.

Another article on InformScotland, written by prominent lockdown sceptic Toby Young, claims that “the cure is worse than the disease”. This is a familiar refrain amid lockdown deniers. In his article, Young writes: “Even in the absence of the detailed cost-benefit analysis the Covid Recovery Group of MPs has repeatedly asked for, it seems overwhelmingly likely that the harms caused by lockdowns in the UK alone are greater than the harms they prevent.”

This Covid Recovery Group is a group of Tory politicians who aimed to prevent a second lockdown being brought in in England.

Mark Harper, the group’s chair, has also claimed the “cure we’re prescribing [lockdown] runs the risk of being worse than the disease”.

On December 22, Padgham penned an article for The Conservative Woman entitled “Your right to refuse the Covid jab”. It states on that website that she is “heading the Recovery Scotland Group”.

InformScotland announced it had changed its name from Recovery Scotland in December 2020.

Padgham is also an active member of the anti-mask Us For Them Facebook group, which is listed as an “information hub” on InformScotland’s website. Think Scotland is also on that list, along with PCR Claims, a website purporting to be for people who want to sue the government for its use of PCR tests which were “never fit for purpose”.

Padgham is listed as a spokesperson for PCR Claims on its website.

DOBINSON is listed as a co-founder of Recovery, a UK-wide campaign aiming for an “end to the panic-driven policies that are doing so much damage to our lives and the nation’s hopes for tomorrow”.

Recovery is also connected to InformScotland, according to the latter’s website, and their Twitter feeds frequently interact.

While listed as a director of the company behind Recovery, Restore the Balance Ltd, Dobinson is also one of the two directors listed on the World4Brexit scheme launched by Nigel Farage.

This scheme is based in the US and registered as a “501(c)(4)” group – meaning it can accept donations of up to $5000 and keep the names of donors secret.

Reform UK, the rebranded Brexit party, claimed at its launch that “national lockdown will result in more life-years lost than it hopes to save”. Farage’s outfit argued that the majority of “the population should, with simple hygiene measures and a dose of common sense, get on with life”. Ballantyne, the party’s leader in Scotland, has been pushing that same narrative through her promotion of InformScotland and elsewhere.

Commenting on the InformScotland site, professor of public health Dr Linda Bauld told the Sunday National that it is “misinformation. It’s factually incorrect, people shouldn’t be disseminating it and they certainly shouldn’t be using a website name which is as close to an NHS website”.

Bauld was referencing NHSInform.scot, the official government platform which offers advice on a wide range of health issues and is frequently promoted by ministers and officials at the coronavirus briefings.

Asked if InformScotland had chosen its name to deliberately mimic NHSInform.scot, Padgham declined to comment.

Bauld went on: “The consequences of this kind of misinformation are serious. They undermine people’s willingness to comply with public health guidance which is there to protect them and their communities. This is harmful to health.”

Asked about claims PCR testing has been discredited, Bauld said they were “complete nonsense”. She said PCR tests are the “gold-standard” used and recognised globally.

COMMENTING on assertions that lockdowns do not work to stop the spread of coronavirus and cause more damage than they prevent, Independent Sage’s Dr Stephen Reicher asked: “Why are all the doctors at the moment saying for God’s sake limit your interactions because the NHS is being overwhelmed?

“It’s because it makes a difference, it obviously does.”

Reicher told the Sunday National: “It’s not just that these arguments are wrong, it’s that these arguments are profoundly dangerous.

“It’s like telling people you don’t think there are cars running down the motorway and telling those people to cross the road. It is an irresponsible and deeply dangerous thing to do.

“These people have decided what the answer is, and then go hunting for the snippets that show it. That’s anti-science, it’s profoundly dangerous and in the end it does cost lives.”

Asked to comment on her promotion of InformScotland, Ballantyne said the website used the “Government’s own data”.

The MSP suggested experts such as Reicher and Bauld should make “clear exactly which bits of the Government data they are concerned about and discuss directly with InformScotland any issues they have about presentation”.

She added: “The public has a right to easily accessible data during this unprecedented time when they are being asked to sacrifice so much. [Scientists] should not be seeking to close down debate, rather they should welcome engagement as the country tries to find a way forward.”

Monteith was approached for comment on his own and Think Scotland’s behalf but did not respond.

Padgham did not respond to requests for comment on her own, PCR Claims’ or InformScotland’s behalf.

Dobinson did not respond to a request for comment.