Y0u, I doubt it ever saw the light of day. One of Blair's first actions when he got into power was to shut down the huge class action, that parents of kids with autism post MMR were undertaking. We could only fight it with Legal Aid and with the Legal Aid gone, the class action collapsed.
I am not 100% certain none of the journos at the time picked up on the cluster thing. As I say it only emerged because of the class action - no-one else had reason to listen to our stories or collate the facts and see a pattern emerge. Blair knocked it on the head (I'm a lifelong Labour member/supporter btw).
It was as a result of the lawyers collating people's stories, that this picture of the clusters emerged. It only emerged by accident. No-one was looking for it. But as they collated the info from everyone - around 2000 families IIRC and I no longer have the paperwork - they also tracked down the batch number of the vaccine for each child. There was more than one manufacturer.
As that info came back, someone somewhere realised they were starting to see the same batch numbers over and over. These were unrelated people, total strangers to eachother, who had never met, and if they were owt like me, had no idea there even were other people affected in their area, let alone from the same surgery.
As it never came to court, that never emerged so far as I'm aware.
Before the Andrew Wakefield fiasco, there was some sympathetic press and maybe someone somewhere, got hold of this. So for all I know it might have been mentioned in passing at the time.
For me, the clusters made the whole thing credible.
It is always worth raising the point that it may not even be the vaccines themselves - just something in the storage protocol. The fact the dodgy GP we hastily picked on our return from the States (because, ironically vaccination was so important to me I wanted it done fast) was later struck off, kind of adds weight to this...
After that experience I just couldn't bring myself to have my younger kids vaccinated with that particular vaccine. They had the other ones in babyhood and have had others since with no ill effects. But never MMR again because I couldn't live with myself doing that to a second child.
My disabled son left school with no GCSEs but spent 5 years getting a BTEC at college and is now at uni. We are intensely proud of him. I felt like my baby died, as he was so unrecognisable and different after the MMR - and in his case it came on that day - a fever, which I had been told to expect so didn't fuss about - followed by just endless bellowing and screaming that went on several years. He lost all his words. He was in nappies til he was 5. He was the youngest child ever statemented by the LEA and in special school's nursery by age 3. He has gone from that screaming/mute little red thing, to a lovely (if damaged) young man who against all the odds is now studying for a degree and I can never believe it when I look back and think of him on his first day waiting for the taxi to special school, in his little coat, to where he is now. All he knows is he was damaged by an injection. You can't say the word 'injection' to him. ;o) I added this last bit to give hope to anyone else with a child with autism.
I have always thought Blair ended the chance of a class action because the stuff was still stockpiled, at that time, and also a cynical way of not paying out compensation. Some families have battled alone without Legal Aid and got paid out. We can't afford to as most can't so with Wakefield discredited, and the press and public now sceptical, there is nowhere to go with this. I will always tell my son's story though, as I don't think this should be airbrushed out.
I have nothing but sympathy for people whose children have been disabled or died due to complications post measles and the other diseases. That must be unimaginably awful, and cruel. But also, I'd ask people to keep an open mind and accept that a minority of children do get vaccine damaged and a lot of the vitriol around these discussions is hurtful to someone, somewhere.