MPs have condemned plans by the former Tory backbencher Andrew Bridgen to host an MEP from Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland in parliament, weeks after members of the far-right party were caught in discussion with neo-Nazis about carrying out mass deportations.
There was also concern that parliament could be used as a platform for the dissemination of conspiracy theories after Bridgen said the event, billed as a meeting of the Save Our Sovereignty campaign group, would discuss issues including “vaccine harms”, 15-minute cities and a “power grab” by the World Health Organization.
Bridgen, who now sits as an independent MP after being expelled from the Conservatives for comparing the use of Covid vaccines to the Holocaust, said the meeting on Monday would be addressed by the AfD MEP Christine Anderson and two other individuals.
The Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran said: “Andrew Bridgen’s fringe views and torrid misinformation have absolutely no place in the House of Commons. Bridgen and his collection of conspiracies have constantly brought our nation into the gutter, and this latest meeting adds another page to his catalogue of errors.”
She added: “This MP does not represent the British people’s views.”
Concern was also expressed by Labour’s Clive Lewis, who said: “You don’t give platforms to people who would take your platform away and when we talk about AFD, we are talking about a party whose members have been actively planning to deport millions of Germans who they deem to be not sufficiently German.
“This is the company Andrew Bridgen is keeping and it is just really grim that they are being taken into parliament.”
Bridgen is suing Matt Hancock after the former Tory health secretary accused him of being antisemitic for likening the Covid vaccine to the Holocaust.
As well as Anderson, the meeting will be addressed by Meryl Nass, who had her licence as a doctor in the US state of Maine suspended during the pandemic over the sharing of misinformation about Covid-19, and Philipp Kruse, a Swiss lawyer associated with an anti-vaccine group.
Bridgen said all MPs and peers had been invited and urged followers on the X social media platform to lobby their member of parliament to attend. He told the Guardian that he was proud to speak alongside Anderson in defiance of what they saw as opposition to a “transfer of sovereignty” to the World Health Organization and “millions of Germans” supported her party.
He claimed that debate about the alleged harms of vaccines was also being “shut down in parliament” and that history “would not judge kindly” those who did not ask questions about the issue. As for 15-minute cites – a concept that has become bound up in conspiracy theories about a “great reset” – he claimed this was also about “taking away the freedoms and rights of individuals”.
Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Germany in recent weeks in protest against the AfD. The protests began after it emerged AfD members had attended meetings with neo-Nazis and other extremists to discuss the mass deportation of migrants, asylum seekers and German citizens of foreign origin deemed to have failed to integrate.
News of the gathering shocked Germany at a time when the AfD was soaring in opinion polls, months before three big regional elections in eastern Germany where its support is strongest.
