Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2021-10-21
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I often have a sense of déjà vu when responding to these covid statements, but I feel it particularly acutely today. I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement. She, of course, has had advance sight of my questions. May I put to her again some of the questions that she did not have—or perhaps did not take—the opportunity to answer earlier? Perhaps she can tell the House the answers now Are Ministers ruling out a so-called plan C, where household mixing is banned? Are they ruling out lockdowns such as those we saw in Leicester, Bolton and so on? And are they ruling out a return to regional tiers? Is the Department looking at plans to introduce regional tiers? Will she also now tell us the criteria that trigger plan B? We did not get an answer to that question earlier either. Why not just make mask wearing—on public transport, for example—mandatory now? Yesterday, the Secretary of State talked about the importance of mask wearing. Why do we not just get on with it? I am afraid that the vaccination programme is stalling. On current trends, the booster programme will not be completed until March next year. At one point back in the spring, we were doing about 800,000 vaccines a day. Why does the Minister not now set a target of 500,000 booster jabs a day so that we can complete the programme by Christmas? We are currently only doing about 165,000 jabs a day. Instead of blaming people for not coming forward, will she not only make sure that everyone eligible is invited and has a letter, but allow those who need a booster—or, indeed, the immunosuppressed who need the third dose—to go to a walk-in centre or a pop-up centre, rather than making them book online as they have to at the moment Children’s vaccination rates are also low, at only about 17%. Of course, we have seen years of cuts to numbers of school nurses and health visitors, who help with the children’s vaccination programme. The rate of infection among children is running at about 10,000 a day. Will the Minister mobilise retired medics and school nurses to return to schools and carry out vaccinations The Minister talked about the importance of the flu jab, but people’s flu jabs are getting cancelled. Will she guarantee a flu jab to all those who need and want one before December Let me put a question to the Minister that I did not put to her earlier. About 20% of covid patients in hospital—or one in six, actually, on the latest figures—are unvaccinated pregnant women. Will she guarantee a helpline so that expectant mothers can access proper advice? Will she deal with some of the anti-vax nonsense that we sometimes see spread on social media? Will she establish a target for driving up vaccination rates, including priority access for expectant mothers Ministers can have plan A, they can have plan B and they can have plans C, D, E and F, but infectious people cannot afford to isolate and transmission will not be broken until we fix sick pay as well. Indeed, there will be those who will fear that getting their booster or their second or third dose could lead to a couple of days of feeling unwell because of the side effects and will not take it because they will not be able to afford two or three days off work as a consequence. We really need to fix sick pay as we go into this next stage of dealing with covid There we have it: those were six straightforward questions for the Minister, and I am looking forward to six straightforward answers—because the wall of defence, I am afraid, is crumbling; vaccination is stalling; and we are heading into a winter of misery. This vaccination programme needs fixing now.