Covid-19: Vaccination of Children

Debate between Angela Eagle and Miriam Cates

Tuesday 21st September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Dame Angela Eagle (in the Chair)]

Before we begin, I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking. This is line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated, and when entering and leaving the Chamber.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the vaccination of children against covid-19.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Angela. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this important debate, and draw Members’ attention to the three e-petitions that relate to this topic, which have amassed more than 100,000 signatures between them.

Vaccination has transformed public health over the last two centuries. As a science teacher, I remember teaching students about the amazing work of Edward Jenner, who famously developed the smallpox inoculation. Two hundred and fifty years later, vaccinations have again ridden to our rescue with the rapid development and roll-out of covid vaccines across the UK. The phenomenal success of the vaccination programme can be seen clearly in the data. Of the 51,000 covid-related deaths from January to July this year, 76% were of unvaccinated people, and a further 14% had received only a single dose. Just 59 deaths—0.1%—were of double-vaccinated adults with no other risk factors, and 92% of adults now have covid antibodies.

Those figures are a ringing endorsement of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation’s strategy to recommend vaccination based on the medical benefits and risks to the individuals concerned. The Government have repeatedly defended both this strategy and the independence of the JCVI, and resisted calls to prioritise the vaccination of teachers or police officers over those at higher risk of serious illness. That was the right approach, and the UK has led the world in falling rates of deaths and hospitalisations.

It was therefore surprising, to say the least, when the Government put political pressure on the JCVI to quickly reach a decision about the vaccination of children. On 3 September 2021, the JCVI announced that it was unable to recommend the mass vaccination of healthy 12 to 15-year-olds. The reason was that, although there are marginal health benefits of covid vaccination to children based on the known risks of the vaccine, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the magnitude of the potential harms, such as the long-term effects of myocarditis.

Paediatrician and JCVI member Adam Finn wrote in The Sunday Times that a high proportion of myocarditis patients showed

“significant changes of the heart. It is perfectly possible that these changes will resolve completely over time. But it is also possible that they may evolve into longer-term changes.

Until three to six months have passed, this remains uncertain, as does what impact on health any persistent changes may have.”

According to the JCVI, for every 1 million healthy children vaccinated, two intensive care unit admissions will be prevented, and three to 17 cases of myocarditis caused. With two doses, that rises to between 15 and 51 cases—finely balanced, indeed.

There is no rush to roll out the vaccine to children. We know that children are not at risk from covid; teachers are no more at risk than the rest of the population; the vast majority of vulnerable adults have been vaccinated; over half of children already have antibodies; and there is no evidence that schools drive transmission.

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[Dame Angela Eagle (in the Chair)]

Order. Before I call Miriam to continue, Members ought to realise that when they say “you” they are referring to the Chair. Can we please try to get the formalities right? I know that it is less important on Zoom, but we are now back.

[Miriam Cates]

My hon. Friend is right. It is widely known that access to GPs is challenging at the moment, and that presents challenges in this situation. It is widely understood that if a child can consent, contrary to parental consent, that is not a tick-box exercise; it is a matter for a medical professional to assess whether the child is competent to consent. If there are problems accessing GPs, there are clear issues here.

There is no rush to roll out the vaccine, and there is no evidence that schools drive transmission. Indeed, recorded covid cases are now at their lowest level since June, despite schools having been open for two weeks. It is also unlikely that vaccinating children will have a major impact on infection rates in the population as a whole, with the JCVI saying that

“the committee is of the view that any impact on transmission may be relatively small, given the lower effectiveness of the vaccine against infection with the Delta variant.”

However, instead of accepting the JCVI’s assessment and waiting for more evidence to emerge, the Government asked the chief medical officer urgently to review the decision based on the wider benefits to children, including from education. Last week, the CMO announced that he would recommend child vaccinations on the basis of these wider benefits.

That decision is a marked departure from the principle of vaccinating people for their own medical benefit, because those wider issues—educational disruption and concerns around mental health—are the consequences of policy decisions and are not scientific inevitabilities. Children in the UK have already missed more education than children in almost any other country in Europe, despite comparable death rates. Since January 2020, British children have lost on average 44% of school days to lockdown and isolation. That is not a consequence of covid infections in children, but rather a result of policy decisions to close schools and isolate healthy children.

According to the Government’s modelling, vaccinating children could save 41 days of schooling per 1,000 children between October and March. That equates to an average of just 15 minutes of education saved per child over this period—surely an insignificant amount, and negligible when we account for the time it takes to vaccinate and the subsequent days off school to recover from potential side effects. There is a much simpler way to stop harmful educational disruption, and that is to follow the advice of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and end the mass testing of asymptomatic children. This unevidenced and unethical policy is costing tens of millions of pounds a week—I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm the exact cost—and is continuing to disrupt education. Even the CMO acknowledges that a vaccination programme alone will not stop school closures. Perhaps the Minister could clarify how the Government intend to end educational disruption.

On the potential mental health benefits from reducing the fear of covid, it is not covid infection that is making children fearful; it is the uncertainty, frustration, loneliness and anxiety that they experience as a result of lockdowns and harmful messages such as, “Don’t kill granny.” Children need not fear catching covid, but they have every right to fear policy decisions that cause them significant harm, and sadly we cannot vaccinate against those.

Nonetheless, the decision has been made, and we have to be very clear that the risks to children, both from covid and from vaccines, are tiny. Concerns should now focus on making sure that the necessary safeguards are put in place as vaccination is rolled out. The previous vaccines Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), assured MPs that there will be no differential treatment of children in schools on the basis of their vaccination status. That is crucial, because any suggestion that unvaccinated young people may be denied education or be subjected to social disadvantage will inhibit the ability of both parents and children to make a free and objective decision. While I appreciate Ministers’ commitments, children already face discrimination in some schools over mask wearing and testing.

We must also make sure that travel rules that differentiate between vaccinated and unvaccinated children do not amount to coercion when parents are making a decision. Can the Minister say how we will ensure that there is no discrimination in practice as well as in theory?

Vaccination must be a free and informed decision. Choosing to have or not to have the vaccine are both perfectly reasonable and sensible decisions where children are concerned. We must ensure that correct and impartial information is communicated and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) said, that there is access to health professionals where necessary. Parental consent must also be respected. Much has been said on this subject, but the heart of the matter is that parental responsibility and authority are foundational to society.

I am optimistic that these protections can and will be put in place. None the less, the way that the decision to vaccinate healthy 12 to 15-year-olds has been made should give us pause for thought. For no other cohort have the Government questioned the JCVI’s advice. Why have we departed from this stance when it comes to children and looked for reasons other than direct medical benefit to press ahead? When there are concerns about the future health of our children, why have we not waited for more evidence to emerge? I fear that this situation, rather than being an isolated incident, epitomises a worrying attitude to children that has been evident since the start of the pandemic.

Throughout the past 18 months, “protect the vulnerable” has been our clarion call. We have rightly made significant efforts to protect elderly people and those who are particularly susceptible to covid, but children, who cannot speak out, do not own property, and have no legal agency, are also very vulnerable. Yet during the pandemic, we have asked this group of vulnerable people to make huge sacrifices to protect the rest of us. The harms of lockdown for our children are significant and, for many, will be irreversible: lost education, missed opportunities, abuse and horrific online harms. The number of children presenting in A&E with acute mental health conditions has risen by 50% since the start of the pandemic.

A climate of fear and uncertainty has robbed children of the structure, routine and security that they need to thrive and has placed on them a heavy emotional burden from inferring that they may be responsible for the deaths of those they love. We have pretended that online learning is somehow a substitute for being in schools, and closed our eyes to the consequences of social isolation for children and young people.

Of course, we should raise our children to take responsibility for their actions, but as adults we should always shoulder the greater burden. We have imposed absurd rules on our young people, right down to deciding whom they can play with at playtime and whether they are allowed to change for PE.

However, we have not seen that much action to urge adults to take responsibility for their own covid risk by, for example, losing weight or exercising—something that would have had a far greater impact on our rates of hospitalisation and death.

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[Miriam Cates]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right; I am not saying that other countries are not basing decisions on their own evidence. I am saying that the success of our programme was based on the JCVI’s advice and its particular method of offering vaccination based on individual medical benefit, which gave us an incredible advantage that could have allowed us to wait a further six or nine months to make this decision.

[Dame Angela Eagle (in the Chair)]

Prior to the hon. Lady responding, the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge must remember that she has to put questions.