Covid-19: Vaccination

Lord Mann Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I do not quite agree with the premise of the question, which is the concept of being partially vaccinated. When you get your first vaccination shot, you are vaccinated, your body has been primed, B cells make the antibodies and you learn how to fight the disease. That is categoric. Where the noble Baroness absolutely has a point is that it is an uncomfortable truth that when we lean in to the virus, it will seek to escape and mutate, and that is the moment of absolute highest risk for the country. That is why we are trying to move as quickly as we humanly and possibly can: there is a moment in time, an opportunity to get the vaccine out to as many people as possible to avoid the mutation throwing up variants that escape our vaccine.

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

We heard a few voices last spring and summer suggesting that the National Health Service was not good enough and that a privatised service would have been better in dealing with the pandemic. They are remarkably silent now. Will the Minister join me in the celebrations across this country at the moment of the brilliance of the National Health Service and the fact that people being vaccinated are going in with a smile on their face, being welcomed by people—volunteers and staff—with a smile on their face, all saying how brilliant our National Health Service is?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I am enormously grateful for the testimony of the noble Lord, but I would probably put it slightly differently. Listen, we are in Act I, and I do not think it is quite the right moment to take curtain calls and bows just yet. The NHS has stepped up to this challenge absolutely magnificently, but there is still a huge amount to do and to get through. In addition to the praise that the noble Lord rightly gave the NHS, I also pay tribute to other parts of government, and particularly to the Army, local authorities and the private sector, which contributed the vaccine in the first place, all of which have worked together in a great spirit of collaboration. It is only through that spirit of collaboration that we have been able to deliver what we have.