Vaccination: Condition of Deployment — House of Commons, 2022-01-31
Topic: Health
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement, and also for his regular contact and briefings on this issue at both ministerial and official level. He is right to say that Labour worked with the Government to ensure maximum take-up of the vaccine across health and social care, and we do not regret that decision. Indeed, we welcome the decision that he has come to today Let me be clear from the start: vaccines are safe, effective, and the best defence that we have against the virus. Whether compulsory or not, it remains the professional duty of all NHS and care workers to get themselves vaccinated, just as it is the duty of all of us to protect ourselves, our loved ones, and our society from the greater spread of infections and hospitalisations, and from the need for harsh restrictions that impact on our lives, livelihoods and liberties. The debate over this policy is about whether the state should mandate the vaccine for health and care staff, or whether it should take a voluntary approach. It is not a discussion about the need to get vaccinated, the arguments for which are overwhelmingly one-sided. With five million people in the UK still to have their first jab, we cannot afford to take our foot off the pedal in getting the message out Labour Members supported the initial policy in early December. Since then we have seen a significant increase in vaccinations among NHS staff, with tens of thousands more staff now protected. I say an enormous thank you to the NHS trusts that worked tirelessly to persuade hesitant staff of the need to get vaccinated, and to those colleagues who have given up considerable time to have supportive conversations with their peers. I thank the health unions and royal colleges which, despite their misgivings about the mandatory nature of the policy, nonetheless did everything they could to encourage their members to get vaccinated Clearly, things have now moved on, in terms of both our overall levels of infections, and in our understanding of this latest variant. It has also become clear that to follow through with this policy could see tens of thousands of staff forced to leave their roles, at a time when our health service is already understaffed and overstretched—indeed, that has been a particular anxiety on these Benches and right across the House. However, efforts must continue to persuade those staff who are still hesitant What lessons have the Secretary of State and his Department learned from the Welsh Government, where 95% of staff were double jabbed by November without any mandate? What can we learn from the Welsh Government’s approach to persuasion, and how can we emulate their success? In light of today’s decision, it is all the more important that health and care workers are empowered to do the right thing and isolate when they need to, without the fear of being unable to feed their families. One in five care homes do not pay staff their full wages to isolate. If we are to learn to live well with covid, that must change. Labour’s plan for living well with covid includes making all workers eligible for proper levels of sick pay. Why have the Government still not sorted this? I appreciate that those are also Treasury issues, but that approach is penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to protecting public health The Labour party supported this measure in December, put the national interest before party politics, and made sure it had the votes needed to pass through the House. We understand the difficulties faced by the Government in coming to today’s decision, and we will continue to be as constructive and helpful as we can be in a national crisis, just as Labour has been throughout the past two years. I welcome very much what the Secretary of State said this afternoon about welcoming Labour support for this policy, and indeed about our wider support for the vaccination roll-out, but let me end on a point of criticism, which is not in any way levelled at the Secretary of State. Given the way that the Labour party has handled its approach to the pandemic response, and the constructive way that we sought to work with the Government, it is not unreasonable to expect the Prime Minister, and others in his party, to stop pretending that that has not been the case. Perhaps he might stop seeking to turn the pandemic—the greatest threat we have faced to our nation for more than 70 years—into a party political mud fight. Surely we can do better than that, and I would like to think that the Secretary of State and I have been leading by example.