Covid-19 Vaccinations: 12 to 15-year-olds

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his support, for his points about guidance to the parents and of course to the children, and for his points about the long-term mental health consequences of this pandemic for school-age children.

I can confirm to the right hon. Gentleman that the NHS—it is incredibly efficient and well-equipped, because it has been running the school age vaccination programme for many, many years for other vaccines—will be the primary vaccination infrastructure that we will use to deliver this vaccine. If there are schools where that is unable to be delivered, we will use the rest of the covid vaccine infrastructure, including vaccination centres, to deliver that in a safe and appropriate way. My point is to reassure him and parents up and down the country that it will be the school age vaccination programme that has run in schools. Teachers and parents are well-versed in that process.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about vaccine uptake. He will recall that I said at this Dispatch Box on 13 February, in launching the vaccine uptake programme, that the NHS continued to put effort and resource into making vaccines available and easily accessible to the most deprived communities and to all ethnic groups. We will continue to redouble our efforts, including with the booster programme, which will come later this month. We have had the interim advice from the JCVI on boosting for flu and covid. The uptake of both should increase the uptake in those communities. We have spent a lot of time looking at that.

The right hon. Gentleman asked an important question about the consent process, and I want to spend a little time on that. As with all vaccinations for children, parental consent will be sought. The consent process will be handled by each school in its usual way and will provide sufficient time for parents to provide their consent. Children aged 12 to 15 will also be provided with information, usually in the form of a leaflet for their own use and to share and discuss with their parents prior to the date of immunisation and the scheduled time for it. Parental, guardian or carer consent will be sought by the school age immunisation providers prior to vaccination, in line with other school vaccination programmes.

In the rare event that a parent does not consent, but the teenager wants to have the vaccine, there is a process by which the school age vaccination clinicians discuss this with initially the parent and the child to see whether they can reach consensus. If not, and the child is deemed to be Gillick competent, the vaccine will take place. That is very rare, but on the whole this is something that the NHS is very well versed in delivering for other vaccination programmes.

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

This is an incredibly sensitive decision but, in an open society, the Government have done exactly the right thing, which is to be open. The narrow health benefits to children are marginal, but the broader health and social benefits are considerable. Most importantly, this is one of the last pieces of the jigsaw if we are going to be able to say we have done everything possible to stop another winter lockdown. However, the final piece of that jigsaw, learning from Israel, is to have booster jabs. Could the Minister tell the House when we will have a decision on boosters? Could he also confirm that we will have no problems with supply after the Valneva decision today and with flu jabs, if we are going to have this big expansion of jabbing later in the autumn?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his important question. He is right to identify that this is a sensitive issue, which is why it was right for the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to take its time to look at the data from other countries on first doses and second doses and for the chief medical officers to then do the work unimpeded which they needed to do. It is right that we follow their advice tonight.

On the booster campaign, we have received the interim advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation—it was published on 30 June this year— on a potential booster programme, including flu and covid vaccine. I can reassure my right hon. Friend that the decision on Valneva will not impact our booster vaccination programme. We await the final advice. The JCVI has received the data from the COV-Boost study, where we looked at all the different vaccine brands—in some instances, full doses and half doses—as to which is the best vaccine to boost with.

I assure him that later this month we will begin a major booster programme. On flu—of course, the flu programme has already begun, and I assure him that we have the supplies for a major programme for both—we are looking at the really ambitious number of 35 million and, when we get the final advice from JCVI, the booster programme will be equally ambitious.