Inside the Radicalised Anti-Vaxxer Network ‘Influencing’ Government Vaccine Advisory Panel

As Covid lobbying groups combine to oppose child vaccination, Nafeez Ahmed and Karam Bales investigate how conspiracy theories and pseudoscience disfigure public debate

A Government advisor who sat on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which in September recommended not giving vaccines to children aged 12-15 years old, appears to be secretly linked with organisations that operate as part of a COVID-19 disinformation network that is now involved in a controversial new anti-vaxxer campaign called ‘Safer to Wait’. The new campaign appears to be part of a wider effort to radicalise members of the public, particularly parents, against vaccines and health workers.

On Tuesday 28 September when Telegraph cartoonist Bob Moran took to Twitter to call for NHS palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke to be verbally abused “for the rest of her worthless existence”.

Leaked chat logs reveal that Moran is also a member of the Health Advisory & Recovery Team (HART) – a COVID-19 disinformation group which harbours a range of conspiratorial views about the pandemic – and a signatory to an anti-mask letter organised by UsforThem, a ‘parents’ lobby involved in a wide range of disinformation with strong ties to the Conservative Party.

Moran’s outburst is a prominent example of how an ongoing campaign against vaccines suggests an effort by pandemic disinformation groups to infiltrate mainstream institutions, with the potential to foster new forms of extremism. Yet both the organisations he is affiliated with – UsforThem and HART – appear to have attempted to lobby government, parliament and media, including the JCVI.

In early September, JCVI member and paediatrician Professor Adam Finn quote tweeted Michelle (‘Molly’) Kingsley, the founding head of UsforThem. Finn thanked Kingsley for her “positive feedback” in support of his article in The Times, in which he argued that it is safer to wait for more evidence on vaccine safety before parents allow children from 12-15 years old to get vaccinated, due to myocarditis (inflammation of the heart) as a rare adverse incident. 

As Byline Times has previously reported, UsforThem’s founders and members have been involved in a wide range of groups and networks promoting COVID-19 and anti-vaxxer disinformation and misinformation. Byline Times has also previously revealed that UsforThem is closely connected to the HART group, with which it shares several members including the retired paediatrician Dr Rosamond (‘Ros’) Jones. 

UsforThem founder Michelle Kingsley has frequently promoted anti-vaxxer content on her Twitter account.

More recently, Byline Times can reveal, Michelle Kingsley’s UsforThem has been linked to a new anti-vaxxer disinformation campaign called ‘Safer to Wait’, which in turn is a hub for a wide variety of COVID-19 disinformation and anti-vaxxer groups around the world. 

Far from being an aberration, new evidence suggests that during his stint at the JCVI, then member Robert Dingwall was connected to the UK’s most prominent anti-vaxxer networks including HART and UsforThem, in order to “influence from inside.”

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Our Friendly ‘On the Inside’

Professor Adam Finn’s decision to quote tweet a group linked to anti-vaxxer disinformation networks raises the urgent question as to whether the JVCI panel has been subjected to a concerted lobbying effort from such networks. 

Finn told Byline Times that his tweets do not represent endorsements and that he does not have time to check out the people he replies to on Twitter. He added: “Until you and others informed me, I was not aware that ‘UsforThem’ or ‘HART’ even existed.” 

For the avoidance of doubt, there is no suggestion that Finn is remotely sympathetic to the anti-vaccine movement. However, Byline Times can reveal that Finn’s former colleague on the JCVI subgroup for COVID-19 vaccines, Professor Robert Dingwall, appears to have secretly been in contact with the HART disinformation group during his advisory role to government – raising the question of whether he had influenced JCVI’s framing and approach to examining risks around infection and vaccines.

Dingwall, a consultant sociologist, was previously a member of the Government’s NERVTAG and JCVI subgroup until a ‘refresh’ in early August saw him leave. However, he remains a Government advisor, sitting on the Moral and Ethical Advisory Group which advises Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty. 

Byline Times has previously revealed that Dingwall is linked to a range of pandemic disinformation networks including the Great Barrington Declaration and its successor organisation Collateral Global, many of whose signatories and members are also involved in UsforThem and HART. Dingwall previously told Byline Times that he is not a member of HART or any other such group, and denied being an anti-vaxxer.

However, internal HART chat logs leaked to Byline Times and other outlets in July suggest that Dingwall, who has claimed that it would be better to allow teenagers and children to get infected with COVID-19 than to be vaccinated, was working “on the inside” to support these pandemic disinformation networks. In August, Dingwall would later claim that his views are largely representative of those held by other members of the JCVI Government advisory panel.

HART and its members have not only promoted extraordinary QAnon-style conspiracy theories about a global depopulation agenda, but have published anti-vaxxer misinformation claiming that the COVID-19 vaccines have been the real culprit behind mass deaths attributed to the pandemic. 

The leaked logs of internal discussions among HART members reveal that despite its veneer of public respectability, the group privately believes that COVID-19 vaccines killed more people than they saved, discussed the idea of hanging nurses, and frequently share bizarre theories about 5G, vaccines and magnetism. HART analyst Joel Smalley, for instance, released a paper in March 2021 implying that COVID19 deaths were actually caused by vaccinations.

Yet the logs also show several members of HART describing how they had been working with Robert Dingwall during his advisory role to NERVTAG and JCVI to “influence” the Government. 

In January 2021, HART founder Narice Bernard asked anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist Clare Craig: “Dingwall is on the inside and friendly are you in touch.” 

Craig has previously claimed that COVID-19 death certificates are false, among other outlandish ideas. 

Ex-Pfizer executive Mike Yeadon, described as a notorious “anti-vax hero” and conspiracy theorist by Reuters who falsely claims that the COVID-19 vaccines cause infertility in women, further said in the HART logs in January 2021: “I was in touch with Dingwall back in early autumn. He told me he was staying in to try and influence from inside.” 

Yet another HART member mentioned that Dingwall had provided them advice on opposing vaccine passports.

HART did not reply to Byline Times’ requests to comment. Robert Dingwall has not replied to Byline Times’ requests for comment. However, after leaving JCVI, he told The Guardian that his views against vaccination of teenagers and children, and in support of children getting infected with COVID-19, were largely representative of JCVI: “I am being portrayed as some kind of lone voice critic of vaccination for [teenagers] but at no point have my views been any different from the broad consensus on JCVI.” 

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Political and Media Lobbying

The JCVI case illustrates how misinformation and disinformation groups are increasingly disfiguring the public debate on vaccines, and potentially distorting Government assessments. 

Many of the groups have met with Conservative Party MPs and successfully influenced UK Government policies and thinking in other ways. UsforThem receives PR support from former Boris Johnson advisor Ed Barker who also runs PR for Conservative MP Steve Baker’s Covid Recovery Group.