National Health Service — House of Commons, 2021-07-13
Topic: Health
Helen Olivia Bicknell Whately (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sorry, but I am conscious of the time left Several hon. Members have argued that we should continue the current approach to increasing uptake and indeed do more. Of course, we will continue to support care workers to take up the vaccine, but, as flagged by my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), the question is: how long do we give that? The vaccination of care home workers in England began in December last year, about eight months ago. We did take a similar approach to that in Scotland mentioned by the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), where staff were vaccinated alongside residents in care homes. NHS teams went into care homes multiple times to offer the vaccination to staff. Indeed, we saw that that was effective and more staff took up the vaccination on subsequent visits. We also opened the national booking system to care home staff early on, before there was wider availability to everybody. We have worked with communities who have been particularly concerned and hesitant about vaccination. There have been materials in multiple languages. We have worked with faith groups. Local authorities have worked closely with care homes, alongside NHS vaccination teams, particularly care homes that have had lower vaccination rates. A huge amount has been done to raise the levels of uptake among care home staff We then have to ask ourselves the question: what more can we do? The No. 1 reason care home staff have given us for not yet being vaccinated is that they want some more time. Well, this gives them some more time through the summer in which to get vaccinated. Some care homes, as I have mentioned, are already doing this. One example is the Barchester care home group, which has over 16,000 staff. The vast majority, over 99%, have chosen to be vaccinated. Fewer than 0.5% have chosen not to be vaccinated. But the problem, if we leave it to care homes that are on the front foot to do this, is that others will be left behind and we will see inequality, where some residents are fortunate to be cared for in a care home where all the staff are vaccinated, and others will not be so safe. That leaves us with inequality for those care home residents, who will remain at greater risk. We know that the vaccination not only protects individuals, but reduces the risk of transmission Some hon. Members have raised the concern that care workers are being singled out in some way. That is not the case at all. This is about the setting of care homes, where we know there is the greatest risk and the greatest vulnerability to covid. This is about protecting individual residents in those care homes by requiring the vaccination of people who enter those care homes to work—so not only care home staff but NHS staff who enter care homes. This is about protecting residents in those care homes. Fortunately, at the moment, the rates are lower than they have been during peak times, but even in some of the recent outbreaks we have seen in care homes, the index case has been an unvaccinated staff member. That just emphasises the importance of us having high levels of vaccination among staff My hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mark Jenkinson) asked me about the data I referred to earlier, the SAGE data on minimum levels and the extent to which that is being achieved by care homes. I shared the most recent data that I have. What we do know is that there are still hundreds of care homes that have not yet met that safe threshold, which is a minimum threshold for avoiding outbreaks in care homes I say to my hon. Friends that the question before us is: what more can we do to protect those who are vulnerable in care homes? This is what we can do and I commend the regulations to the House.