National Health Service — House of Commons, 2021-07-13
Topic: Health
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with my hon. Friend, and that is why I think these proposals are mistaken. Let me just step briefly through the proposals in front of us. First of all, I completely agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) said about the impact assessment. I have been a Minister; I have been through impact assessments, prepared them, signed them off and presented them to the House, and I am afraid it is not good enough The proposals will have a very significant impact on hundreds of thousands of people and many thousands of businesses—it is a significant step; it is the first time that we will have mandated in law effectively compulsory vaccinations—and it is frankly offensive that it is being debated in a 90-minute statutory instrument debate in the House. From the name of the regulations it does not leap out as to what they are, and I think many colleagues were unaware of the fact that we were being asked to vote on this measure today until it was drawn to their attention. That is the first point The second point is that if the information is available, even if it is imperfect—I accept that it will be imperfect and there will be things that we cannot be certain about—it is the Minister’s duty, if she has that information, which one of these documents says she does and one of them says she does not, to put what she has in front of the House. She should sign it off—she is responsible for that—and allow us to see it before we are asked to vote on the regulations I am afraid it is an abuse of the House to ask us to vote without that information. If this was genuinely an emergency, that might be acceptable, but, as I have already said, these regulations, if passed, do not come into force for 16 weeks. That is November. There is ample time to complete the impact assessment and bring the regulations back before the House. Even if that was in September, we could then have a tighter deadline and still deliver the legislation before it is currently scheduled to become law. I think that would be preferable It is worth saying that I could have been persuaded, although I have reservations, to support mandatory vaccination for care home staff, if a good case had been made about the risk reduction to residents. I did not actually hear the case being made about the risk reduction to residents. It is not set out in any of the documents in front of us, and the Minister did not set it out in her remarks, but I remain open to that, which is why I would urge her to bring back further proposals later However, that is not at all what is in front of us. These proposals are incredibly broad: they apply to everybody who enters the premises of a care home. Even if they never see a resident or are there only for moments, the care home will be prohibited by law from allowing them to enter, and will have to ask them intrusive questions about their health status, perhaps including what health conditions they have that mean they do not have to get a vaccination. That care home will then have to ask the employer, and those businesses that want to transact with care homes will then have to ask those intrusive questions of their employees. The scope of these proposals is massive, and is particularly troubling given what the Government said yesterday in the House about domestic vaccine passports. Many of us are concerned that insisting that employers ask their staff intrusive questions about their health conditions, when there is no good reason to do so, is the thin end of a wedge.