Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) (Amendment) (Coronavirus) (No. 2) Regulations 2021

Debate between Lord Bishop of St Albans and Lord Cunningham of Felling

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I think many of us are grateful for the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, about process and impact assessments, and I echo those.

I shall make one or two comments about the substantive issues. Incidentally, we have been thanking the Government and medics for the rollout, but I want to pay tribute to the people who are going to be sitting up half the night: the managers of GP practices—they are the ones who get people there to get the vaccine. Very often they are forgotten, so I want to make that point.

I want to make some points about the very real problems that there are with this way forward. I am very sympathetic and, on balance, I think this is the way forward, but for many decades we have taken very seriously those who have very real concerns about receiving a vaccination. Those are not concerns that I share personally, but there are those, for example, who are concerned about the use of aborted foetal cells or testing on animals. We—both myself and more widely in the Church of England—have always maintained the position that freedom of belief or religion should not be compromised by the introduction of any form of coercion or forced decree. This is difficult, because it is not just about someone’s right but about the effect that they have on someone else. Recently, I heard from someone who was jabbing—giving vaccinations—that someone came in without a mask on. They challenged him and he said, “I don’t get on very well with masks”, to which one of the nurses said, “Well, I hope you get on well with a ventilator.” That is the implication; we know what the medical science is.

The problem is that there is the danger of a subtle form of racial discrimination via the backdoor. Ethnic minorities comprise a much higher percentage of healthcare staff compared with the overall population. We know that they are more likely to be religious than the white British majority, and vaccine hesitancy is much higher among these communities. There is a whole range of complex issues to do with social trust and people’s position in society that I do not want to steamroller over without raising and putting on the record as we move forward with this programme. A worrying confluence of factors could leave those historically discriminated against being forced to choose between violating deeply held principles and unemployment. No one, whether white or from an ethnic-minority background, should be forced into that corner.

This raises the really important issue of how we are addressing vaccination hesitancy. I have been talking to the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, about how can we help with that more widely across the globe. This is a reminder to those of us who are in touch with—particularly if you are in my line of business—black churches and so on that we need to up our game in addressing the reasons for vaccination hesitancy. We need to do it urgently, because the more that we can win the argument, the more we will save ourselves a lot of unintended consequences of discrimination that may result from these regulations.

[Lord Cunningham of Felling (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Your Lordships will no doubt be delighted to know that, in January, I shall be leaving it—not by choice but because I have been cycled off.

At the heart of this dispute with the Department of Health and Social Care is the requirement, not option, that any department submitting secondary legislation—principally to this House, since it is almost never discussed at the other end of the Corridor in the House of Commons —should include an impact assessment. This is not an optional extra. It is not a take it or leave it. It is a requirement at the heart of the process. The committee is meeting at the moment—it may have concluded—and it has a Conservative chairman, who is very good. There is no predetermined disposition among its members to seek a confrontation with any government department. However, in this case, the Secretary of State and his department have point-blank refused to carry out an impact assessment. It is a challenge to Parliament and to the parliamentary process. That is what is taking place.

I agree with almost everything that the right reverend Prelate said about enforcing vaccination and I realise that there are some very serious problems to be resolved there. But that is not what the argument is about. It is about whether Parliament—in this case, your Lordships’ House—has the right to require any government department to produce an impact assessment about its proposals for legislation. It is quite a simple matter. It is not onerous in most cases. It is necessary for the committee to consider the impact assessment—along with other aspects of the legislation, of course—before reporting to your Lordships’ House. I did not hear in the Minister’s opening remarks a coherent explanation—and I have never received or seen one—of why that is not possible in this case.

As I said, your Lordships require their colleagues on the committee to analyse secondary legislation. That is our role and, if we do not have an impact assessment, we cannot fulfil it. That is the issue. I agree with what the right reverend Prelate said, but this is not about enforcing vaccination. It is about trying to learn to understand the impact, through an impact assessment, of this proposed secondary legislation. If committees are not allowed to take a stand on this, there is little purpose to them, because this is one of the fundamental issues of secondary legislation. That is our job and our responsibility and it is what we have been trying to do.