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

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

My Lords, I had not intended to contribute to this debate, but I will say a few words. First, I am completely against any compulsory vaccination of any kind. It goes completely against all that we should believe in and I am totally opposed to it. Secondly, I recently put down two Written Questions to the Minister’s department: one about people who had been vaccinated and one about people who had tested positive with antibodies. I wanted to know the difference between the two; I wanted to know about protection from the disease and about transmission of the disease. The Answers that I got said, “We’re looking at it, but as far as we can tell at the moment, there is no difference”—it was 84% versus 85%. There is no difference between the protection that the vaccine offers and the protection given by antibodies in the normal course of events. Surely we are not going to vaccinate people who have the antibodies. It is absolutely pointless, particularly if they are thousands of schoolchildren. Can we not test people who have the antibodies and tell them that they do not need to be vaccinated? That seems to be common sense.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, it seems that we have come down to debating two specific issues. The first is, of course, the question of mandatory vaccination for healthcare staff and whether we should support it. The second is the way in which the Government have been treating Parliament over not just this issue but the hundreds of statutory instruments that have been brought in relation to Covid, many of them by the Minister’s department.

We are entitled to a full response as to why the impact assessment was published so late. As I said, I am afraid that this is not the first occasion. I have been following the work of Big Brother Watch over the Covid experience. It has set out clearly the hundreds of SIs that have been brought here retrospectively and the impact on parliamentary democracy. We all know that we are in the middle of a crisis and that, of course, the Government have to act quickly—we all understand that. Even so, the one thing that we are entitled to say is, if they are doing that, they should be able to produce the documentation to justify the action that they are taking.

The mandatory vaccination of healthcare staff was not a decision that was suddenly reached in the last few days; it has been trailed for weeks in the consultation. I declare my interest as a member of the GMC board. I am not speaking on its behalf, but the GMC and many other organisations responded to that consultation, so there is no excuse, in this instance, for there not to be a full impact assessment published alongside the SI so that my noble friend Lord Cunningham and his committee can consider it with ample time and we can then enjoy their recommendations to us.