Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation etc.) (Revocation) (England) Regulations 2022

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hutton of Furness (Lab)]

My Lords, I have some sympathy with the arguments that the noble Baroness has just made, but I think this is probably not the time to have a general debate about the Government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

These regulations are fairly narrowly drafted and are designed to repeal the earlier regulations that required vaccination against Covid-19 to be a condition of deployment in the NHS. I support the repeal of these regulations. The Government have made a good case for the repeal in the Explanatory Memorandum, but none the less, it represents quite a significant and dramatic U-turn in government policy.

I do not think it made a lot of sense to require compulsory vaccination; there were other ways of ensuring the protection from harm of NHS patients. Of course, the loss of critical front-line NHS staff which the earlier regulations might well have produced would itself have represented quite a significant risk of harm to NHS patients.

Today, I have only one question I want to ask the Minister. Again, it is something that is contained in the Explanatory Memorandum. Paragraph 7.29 says that the Government will engage with NHS employers to review their policies on the hiring of new staff and the deployment of existing staff to take into account their vaccination status. I ask the Minister what the Government want to see change in NHS hiring and employment practices. Will new employees in the NHS, for example, need to have been vaccinated against Covid-19? What does this paragraph in the Explanatory Memorandum actually mean?

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I speak in support of the amendment from my noble friend Lady Brinton. One of the main reasons I am doing so is that I think the messaging being put over at the moment is entirely wrong and out of sync with where we are in this pandemic.

I watched a very short World Health Organization video this morning. It was only a minute long and it was called “Moving from Pandemic to Endemic”. The clear message was that endemic does not equal good. During an endemic, you actually require strong health control programmes if you are going to continue to reduce infections, hospitalisations and deaths—something I am sure we all want to do. In my view, there is a pressing need to maintain some of the public health measures that can help us control this virus as it becomes endemic. You can change the label but that does not change the challenges facing us, which, in my view, require sustained protections, particularly for the most vulnerable, and a very strong public health system.

Looking back at the Statement from the Prime Minister when the living with Covid plan was introduced, I was perplexed. He set out the rationale that cases were falling, hospitalisations were falling and the number of excess deaths from omicron was actually in negative territory. Were that still the case, I suspect I would feel quite a lot more relaxed than I do at the moment. This morning, I reviewed the figures and the latest stats from the ZOE study, the ONS and the Government’s own dashboard. Just on the Government’s dashboard we are seeing an increase of 52% in people testing positive over the last seven days and an increase of 18% in patients admitted to hospitals over the last seven days. That is not a virus in retreat.