A New Role for a New Kind of Judiciary with Ian Clayton

Ian Clayton is a retired lawyer in the UK from a very successful career that spanned real estate management and legal professions in both public and private sector roles. Working in England and in Spain, he has become heavily involved in seeking a people solution to the current and obvious humanitarian crisis. Ian’s work experience alongside many now well-known names from the world of medicine and science in pursuit of the approval of several early treatment therapies, which can be used to treat COVID-19.

This is an edited segment from the weekly live General Assembly meeting on April 25, 2022. This presentation is also available on Rumble and on Odysee. The full General Assembly Meeting is available in the Newsroom. A transcript of this presentation can be found below.

[00:00:00] [00:00:30] Dr. Jennifer Hibberd: Now it’s my great pleasure to introduce Ian Clayton, a lawyer in the UK, he retired from a very successful career that spanned real estate management and legal professions in both public and private sector roles. [00:00:43] He’s been working in England and in Spain. Like all of us here and has become heavily involved in seeking a people solution to the current and obvious humanitarian crisis. Having worked alongside many now well-known names from the world of medicine and science in pursuit of the approval of several early treatment therapies, which can be used to treat COVID-19. [00:01:06] Here we have Ian’s topic today is a future, a new role for new kind of judiciary. Thank you so much for joining us today, and we’re very grateful to have you share your experience, knowledge and your vision for our legal system moving forward. [00:01:22] Ian Clayton: And first of all, can I just say I thoroughly enjoy presentation from Siji and Monica. They were fascinating and in comparison, my subject is much more boring, so hopefully I can make it interesting and give some good news with my ideas for a possible future legal system. [00:01:43] What I would like to just briefly summarize is my thoughts through my career, on the legal system that we have, and please bear in mind, I’m talking about the legal system here in the UK. I mean, I do think a lot of the principles apply internationally, but I’m focused obviously on these systems that I’m familiar with. [00:02:05] Throughout my career, I’ve always looked very critically at the legal system we have here and from the very outset it’s, as I’m sure it is in other countries, it soon becomes very clear when you look at the detail of it, that there are an awful lot of things that you begin to question. You question the equity and fairness of it in so many respects. You question not only the legislation, you question the process, you question the core processes, you question the civil procedure process. And although I have no experience in criminal law, you do question the criminal process too. [00:02:50] As we all know over the course of this last two years, the legal systems in probably every country in the world, have come under increased scrutiny and they’ve also become under scrutiny from a much, much wider audience. The same has happened with medicine of course, there are a huge increase in the number of people throughout the world, who are far more knowledgeable about medicine now than they were 24 months ago. And the same as the situation, no doubt with the legal systems everywhere. [00:03:27] Now again, going back to the question of fairness and things that had occurred to me from very early on, I became aware that although the whole legal process is set up to be fair to the people, it was set up for people. It was set up so that we had a society that could deal with matters that needed some sort of a fair hearing and justice. And it was for the benefit of the people. And what was very clear to me early on was that if you were in a situation where you were dealing perhaps with an individual and a corporation or an institution, the system certainly in the UK seems in practice, not in theory, but certainly in practice, it seems to favour the corporation or the institution. The individual, who to me matters much more than any institution or cooperation, was very much second class to these big organizations or even small organizations. And that just seemed somewhat unfair. Now , when you consider what’s happened over the last two years, I think we’ve seen an acceleration and expansion of this favoritism, giving an advantage to corporations and institutions. [00:04:59] And what I’ve also noticed and I mean, I don’t practice now, but I have been working over this past two years with a lot of lawyers who do still practice, I’m very familiar with cases that they’ve dealt with, I’ve referred a lot of cases to them that I’ve sort of received, um, received requests, et cetera, from members of the public who are having difficulties relating to pandemic situations. [00:05:25] And it’s become very apparent that the whole legal process is flawed to a huge extent. If I can give you one example. This was actually the very first case that was referred to me. And it came to me about a year ago. It wasn’t long after the vaccine rollout began. And I had a lady contact me because her son who was a special needs guy. He was wheelchair bound, he was 23 years old and other than having physical disabilities, which weren’t life-threatening, he was otherwise healthy. Because he has special needs, this lady had said to me she contacted me and she said, ‘I’ve got a real issue because we are having to go to a hearing in the court of protection’. I think she got about a week’s notice, might’ve been slightly more, it wasn’t a great deal of notice for the hearing. And this hearing had arisen, because her son’s general practitioner suggested that he received the COVID vaccination. So the family opposed it, well, the whole family didn’t really see COVID is such a big threat. [00:06:42] For whatever reasons they all opposed the COVID vaccination. None of the rest of her family had been vaccinated and the GP had referred, because the family would opposing vaccination, the GP had referred the matter to the local social services. So social services have become involved and to cut a long story short, basically after an approach to the family by social, the social worker allocated, the matter ended up in the hands of the Court of Protection for a decision to be made as to whether or not this young 23 year old guy who was healthy, had nothing wrong with him throughout his life, other than his physical disability. The court, decided that he was to be vaccinated. And the astonishing thing about it, the hearing that took place, the court hearing that took place in the court of protection gave the family absolutely no means to challenge it. Their case wasn’t heard, their wishes were dismissed without hearing. And as I say, that’s the first example tha t I’ve come across during the pandemic period. [00:08:03] Now, following on from that, I would say in the next, maybe six to eight weeks, I must have had a dozen, at least another dozen cases, very similar, maybe more, in fact, not very similar identical they’re identical, and this is still happening now, you know, a year down the line. The court of protection are literally, they are rubber stamping rulings and orders for people, for vulnerable people or children where parents may be separated and disagree on what’s best for the child. Court protection was just favoring vaccination across the board. [00:08:48] And I’m not aware of any cases where families wishes are being taken into account, that they’re being dismissed. Dismissed unheard, to be honest. So that really worried me. And it made me think more and more about where we’re going with with our legal system and what we should do, how we should think about it. [00:09:10] One thing that just to mention, for the last two years, year and a half to two years, I’ve become quite friendly with a guy he’s a New York city attorney by the name of Joe Lorigo (Ralph). And for anyone that might not know Joe, I know Tessa will certainly know Joe, Joe Lorigo was the New York attorney who acted for several families who wanted loved ones who had been admitted to hospital with COVID whose families would wanted them to be prescribed ivermectin and hospitals that refused. So Joe, I think there are three or four families that he’s actually acted for in seeking, the prescription and the administration of Ivermectin to patients who were in ICU. [00:10:01] And I’m speaking to Joe it was, it was about a year ago, it was shortly after the vaccination program had commenced, we were discussing the, not so much the orders that he’d obtained for the prescribing and administration of Ivermectin, but the background to them, the discussion that had taken place between the attorneys that were acting for the hospitals and himself, acting for the patient and the judge the guy, I think certainly in two cases, the judge was a guy called, Henry Nowak and he was telling me that Henry Nowak, when he made the application, to request an order for ivermectin to be prescribed, the judge, judge Nowak actually said that it wasn’t for a judge to prescribe a medicine. [00:10:52] And that I thought was really interesting because I thought that’s a judge that knows a lawyer who has become a judge and is not in a position to prescribe a medicine. They’re not in a position. You know, even as privileged position as the judge, he’s not in the position to make medical decisions, medical judgements, or rulings. [00:11:18] So what actually happened was, Ralph Lorigo, the family, lawyer, family attorney, he had to go to the family physician. This was at the at the directional or the suggestion of the judge, he had to go to the family physician of the patient who was in hospital and ask if the family physician was willing to write a prescription for ivermectin, which was agreed, the physician did so. [00:11:48] T hat was the medical decision made it wasn’t the judge’s decision. The judge acknowledged that it wasn’t for him to do that. Now I thought that was a really, that was an amazing thing to hear. I think in the UK, the judge would have quite honestly expected, of thought that he had every right to rule that ivermectin needed to be prescribed and must be prescribed. [00:12:11] But the order actually just orders the hospital to administer the prescribed ivermectin. And that is part of the way that I think we need to go looking to the future. But I think expanding more than, than judges, just realizing that they can’t prescribe medicines. I think we actually need to look at judges, who judges are, what their roles are and what a judge’s job actually is. [00:12:43] And with this in mind, when you look at the traditional situation that we’re now living in, we have judges who are lawyers that basically lawyers, they become judges, they’ll have a specialism in a particular area of law, they’ll end up as a judge having to make decisions on areas of law that they don’t have specialism in. And nothing itself raises questions. [00:13:07] Now, in respect of something as important as people’s health, I think it’s questionable as to whether or not a lawyer who has become a judge is actually in a position to make such decisions, directions, and judgements anyway. Clearly to me, it seems to make sense that any judge who is to make a ruling with regard to a life or death situation involving hospitalization, intervention, drugs, whatever it might be, needs to be medically trained. They need to be a medical professional. [00:13:45] Now, many lawyers would probably say, how can we possibly, you know, judges or lawyers traditionally. But there’s no reason for them to be and this is where we have to think outside the box. A judge has to have sound judgment or you would hope a judge would have sound judgment. I know many judges here that really in my view, don’t have sound judgement. As I’m sure there are elsewhere. But you need the judge to be able to make a sound judgment on the basis of the facts and the circumstances and the evidence. Now providing you have someone who is appropriately experienced and has the correct sort of thought process to make a clear minded decision, there’s no reason why that couldn’t be a medical person. So looking to the future, I think that we really have to have a judiciary. It’s a multidisciplinary judiciary and I’m not just talking about medicine, it could be another area, it could be in an area like, this is just a wild sort of statement, transport. [00:14:57] If there’s a transport issue, then why not have someone who really understands transport to make the judgment. But I think more than that, I think we need a panel. I think, I think we’re in a dangerous position and we always will be in a dangerous position where we have maybe only one person who was sitting there hearing cases and making rulings [00:15:19] And I think that’s even more important if we’re talking about life situations or health situations, I think a panel’s terribly important. So I think what we have to do with our entire legal system, what, with a particular emphasis on medicine and medical decisions, medical cases, I think we really have to go back to basics. I think we have to start with a clean sheet and we’d need to rethink the whole thing. And we need a complete new way of looking at medical cases and having appropriate, experienced people deciding on these matters. [00:15:58] One final thing. Just to say that this is very, very topical at the moment. There’s a guy over here in the UK, he actually lives not far from me, his name’s Michael O’Bernicia. Michael isn’t a lawyer, but he’s brought many, many cases, civil cases against authorities, civil cases against corporations and organizations. And he’s also brought private criminal prosecutions on several occasions. [00:16:28] And Michael, a few months ago, I think it was late in 2021, Michael, among other people who brought a case, a private prosecution against certain parties, some named some not named publicly. And it was relating to the administration of midazolam in care homes and in hospitals used for old patients or elderly patients. [00:16:51] And the case had been held, and delayed until last month, March. It finally came before a judge last month a decision from the judge was delivered to Michael yesterday. And the judge’s decision, I’ve actually written this down, this is verbatim from the email, in the case of the private prosecution for Midazolam, the wrongful administration of Midazolam, the judge decided that I’ll quote exactly what the judge said, ‘I have decided not to decide this matter’. [00:17:30] Now, to me, that, that is everything you need to know to realize, that we need to completely look at our legal systems. We need to look at our judiciary. We need to look at how the judiciary is constituted and how it’s appointed. We need to look at panel formation. We need to look at a separate kind of judicial reform medical, um, matters and other matters of importance to life and sustaining life. [00:18:02] So, that is really, that sums up all that I want to say, I think on that final word, the judge, decided not to decide this matter. I think that is just a huge red light that tells us we need to rethink our legal systems and judiciary [00:18:18] Jennifer, if I can just hand back to you. [00:18:21] Dr. Tess Lawrie: Thanks very much Ian. I can’t agree with you more and it’s such a relief to hear somebody is, you know, in the legal background is looking into this. I’m sure there are many people, but, just to, hear your thoughts has been, has been amazing. [00:18:34] I contacted early on last year, I contacted a judge who you would know him, uh, who had been speaking out about COVID strategy and not agreeing with the government policy in the UK or questioning it anyway, and I reached out to him to inform him about ivermectin and to, because it seemed like a sensible potential ally, you know, who could help put the case forward or at least hear me out, on the subject of the suppression of early treatment and ivermectin. And he said I’m sorry, I can’t help you because I have to defer to the government advisors, the medical advisors and if they say ivermectin doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work. So there was this disconnect and it was so frustrating to see how medicine and law [in audible] and yet there so needs to be an integrated understanding and a multidisciplinary approach when it comes to these cases and it’s been so enormously frustrating to have no legal avenue to get effective treatment to people or so it appears, and we’ve been applying, trying to get Ivermectin, have a judicial review of Ivermectin through the medicine’s regulatory agency in the UK MHRA. And again, it’s been such a laborious process and we getting nowhere. [00:19:56] So it’s just it’s just enormously frustrating. So I just wanted to ask you, has there been any glimmer of hope in the UK, through the UK courts in the last two years, given the crimes that have been committed, by pharmaceutical companies and the officials and organizations and others, are there any instances where you think the legal system has actually served human rights? [00:20:19] Ian Clayton: I’m not aware of any significant ones relating to the crimes that have been committed. There may be some, I’m not aware of them. And I’m pretty much aware of most, if not, all of what’s been going on. The only positive case that I can think of, and it doesn’t involve crimes or anything of that nature, but the only positive case that was great news was of course Dr. Sam White’s case, when he won the right, not in effect, not to be censored by the GMC. Other than that, I don’t think there’s been any positive cases at all that I’m familiar with. [00:20:57] You mentioned there Tess, about the fact that governments and the government and authorities have a relatively limited number of people that they have to refer to, like the chief medical officer, for example, that’s one of the great problems, they’re all part of the same circle, that’s the difficulty. So they speak of independence, but there is no genuine independence. And I think one of the ways forward, and it’s not really a legal process, I don’t, I’m not convinced that legal process with the current system is actually going to work at all. I think what we need more than anything, and this, this is again, a difficult thing to, to achieve, we need to establish dialogue with the relevant authorities, the MHRA other sub-departments within the department of health and social care. Really, we need the government to come to the table. We need to talk to them and we need people like yourself and you know, like many of your colleagues to be there, to speak with them too. [00:22:05] But of course, having the government be receptive to a request of that nature is like, how possible is it? How probable is it? It’s very improbable. It’s possible. It could be done. But of course it requires their cooperation. [00:22:21] Dr. Tess Lawrie: As we discovering there’s many conflicts of interest within these organizations or, agencies like the MHRA where the individuals on these panels actually have a conflict, financial conflicts of interest with pharmaceutical companies. [00:22:35] So, you know, the system is just so broken on every level. [00:22:39] Ian Clayton: I think that’s why we have to think outside the box, we have to do something different because we certainly can’t continue down the track that we’re going down. We know, although I’m not medical, obviously having worked with you for so long and being very familiar with what you’ve done and what, you know, the evidence behind what you’ve done, I know that it’s vitally important that that is widely known and it’s known by, it’s known by an authority that can actually make a decision to, to make the approval that’s needed. But I really think it’s such a long shot. We’re going to do it by other means. And I wish I had an ideal answer and I don’t. [00:23:18] There’s quite a few questions in the chats that I’m hogging the limelight here. Let me find some, nice questions from the others. There’s a few questions about common law, and people wondering where does common law sit and how can it be used? [00:23:33] I’ve got to be honest, I’m not a fan of Common Law. I believe that the law that we have, the statutory law that we have, we have what we need, to achieve what we need, but what we don’t have is a fair system. We don’t have a fair system. We don’t have judges who are receptive to a hearing a fair case, I don’t believe. So, I’m not a common law specialist. I don’t know a great deal about it, but I’m not a fan of common law, to be honest, I don’t think that’s going to hold the answer for us. [00:24:07] Dr. Tess Lawrie: Thanks, Ian. There’s a question from one of our youth committee members ; what action steps can young people take to help the situation? [00:24:16] Ian Clayton: In my view, I’m going to plug UK citizen here, because I think young people, in fact, anyone of any age who feel helpless, feel that they’re not quite sure what to do, they needs support in even deciding what they can do. I think joining UK citizen 2021 is a great step to take because they have a number of teams who were made up of specialists. They have professional specialists. For example, there’s a legal team that has many lawyers in it. We have a healthcare team, it has many doctors and other healthcare professionals in it. We have a team looking at science and technology. We have a police team. And the thing is they don’t have to be specialists in these particular areas to, to become part of those teams that I mentioned. [00:25:06] If they’ve got an interest in a particular area and they feel that they can contribute, even if they’re not quite sure what to do, the people there who work alongside them, that can guide them, they can make a great contribution to what UK citizens are doing. And I would say, anyone who wants to do something to help, that is a great first step. It’s a fabulous first step to take, actually, because UK citizen are made up of a fabulous bunch of people. They really are wonderful. And you know, it was a privilege for me to be involved in setting it up and working with them for quite a long period of time. [00:25:49] Dr. Tess Lawrie: Ian, are you aware of organizations like similar to UK citizen and other countries like the US and Canada? [00:25:56] Ian Clayton: I am aware that they do exist. Some of them have have contacted us. They contacted us not, you know, in the early stages of UK citizen. And they asked us if we would mind them copying the model we used to establish UK citizen, which we don’t. I mean, you know, it’s, it’s a universal thing. [00:26:15] It’s like open source, how we did it. It’s open source. Anyone can have it, it’s for the good of everyone everywhere. So there certainly are other organizations. There are several of them in many countries. If anyone was interested in, in details, or want some specifics of those that have been in touch with us from Canada, we certainly had a couple from Canada, who’d been in touch. We’ve had one or two from the United States. If there’s anyone there who would like me to dig out the relevant information for them, if they contact me directly, I’d be more than happy to do so. [00:26:53] Dr. Tess Lawrie: Thanks very much. Another question; does the disregard for individuals rights have to do with the fact that we are not seen as living beings? [00:27:01] Ian Clayton: In someone’s mind it might. I’ve got no doubt that there are people out there among the evil crowd that we seem to have pulling the strings that someone will think that that’s an unacceptable and intolerable take, though. I think it will be very difficult to successfully argue that to be the case. [00:27:21] Dr. Tess Lawrie: Thanks very much. So, just, just a quick, um, back to UK citizen, is it open to internationals? [00:27:27] Ian Clayton: Yeah. There is an international group in there. It’s not a huge group, but anyone from anywhere in the world, if they join up with you guys, so what I would say, anyone that wants to join up, they do need to Signal messenger. It’s administered through Signal messenger. But they can go to, the website is currently being updated, but if they go to the existing website, UK citizen 2021 dot org, there’s a link in there where they can join up and the admin team will allocate them to the international group if they’re from overseas or if they’re UK based, they’ll be allocated to one of the regional groups here in the UK. And then quite separate to that, if there’s a special area of interest they have, or if there’s an area of expertise they have, then they, they will be informed of the various, specialist groups that are available to them. And if they so wish then they can join one of those two. [00:28:22] Dr. Tess Lawrie: Thanks. Thanks very much Ian. There are a couple more questions in the chat, but I see the time’s marching on, so I’m going to ask if you could just answer those questions in the chat directly, um, and thanks very, very much. And I’m going to hand back to Jennifer. [00:28:36] Ian Clayton: Thank you very much. Thanks a lot. [00:28:38] Dr. Jennifer Hibberd: Thanks Tess. And thank you so much Ian. I have to tell you Ian, that was also heartbreaking to hear about the cases you spoke about and we’ve heard many of those kinds of cases. For the legal system to make medical decisions is not the norm we’ve known up until recently. So we’re all getting our head around this, and we always hope that judges and ultimately judgments are unbiased. [00:29:00] But currently medical issues have been politicized here and very likely going forward. So in order to prevent the legal system from breaking down, people losing faith and possible evidence of corruption, which we’re all starting to suspect, your concept makes so much sense that a panel of experts is necessary from bias processes and judgements to be a way of life. So I thank you so much. [00:29:24] I commend you for your your inspirational. Actually, everybody talking today has been really inspirational for us, but just opening our mind and thinking in a broader spectrum and broader way about what we’re dealing with right now. And there are solutions, but we have to make it happen. Thank you so much for being here today. Really appreciate you here. [00:29:42]