Covid-19 Update

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The hon. Lady shakes her head, but my first duty is to protect people here in this country, while at the same time making sure that people get access around the world, as we have done, for instance, with the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab—half a billion jabs have been done around the world. That is my order of priorities; I am very, very clear about it. We will help the rest of the world to get vaccinated, but we also need to look out for and vaccinate the British population. As for the first half of the hon. Lady’s statement, it was completely wrong.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

My constituents in Newcastle-under-Lyme have done everything we have asked of them during this pandemic. They have stayed at home and protected the NHS, and then they went out and got vaccinated in huge numbers, so any sense that these restrictions are to protect those who chose not to get vaccinated will be seen by them and me as deeply unfair. Will the Secretary of State set out what assessment he or his scientific advisers have made of the extent to which these restrictions are required to protect those who chose not to get protected?

[Matt Hancock]

This change is emphatically not for the purpose of protecting those who have chosen not to get vaccinated. It is emphatically to ensure that we have the time to offer the jab—both first jabs to all adults and second jabs for those who have had their first. To go through the data on that, currently, 93% of over-40s have had their first jab, but there are still 4.5 million who have not yet had the second jab. We can get through the majority of those over the next four weeks. Then, of course, we have been able to bring forward the date by which we will have offered a first jab to everybody. This is about the ability of the people who want to come forward to get jabbed to do so, and that is what we will achieve by 19 July to that degree. I hope that we end up with an uptake of almost 100% by the end of this; the uptake figures have been absolutely astonishing, so we will keep offering, we will keep encouraging people to come forward and we will keep trying to make the system and the vaccines as accessible as possible, but the thing that is in the direct control of the Government—subject to supply, of course—is the offering of the jab, and that is the commitment that we have made by 19 July.