Vaccination Strategy

Mark Jenkinson Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Maggie Throup]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point, and it is not the first time the issue has been raised with me. We had that situation in the run-up to Christmas, and we are obviously now in the run-up to half term and Easter as well. I assure her that measures are being considered to see how to resolve the situation.

[Mark Jenkinson (Workington) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for her efforts to save us from vaccine-only passports, leaving the option for testing on the table, given what we know about the impact of vaccination on transmission and that fact that with compulsory vaccination the Government’s central assumption is the loss of more than 100,000 healthcare workers. She has set out that patient safety is paramount to her. Does she therefore share my concern that we risk lulling healthcare workers and patients into a false sense of security? Is it not the case that daily healthcare worker testing is a much safer option to rely on for the protection of patients?

[Maggie Throup]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about daily testing, which is being carried out with certain cohorts of the workforce. The UKHSA continues to monitor the best way to ensure that the workforce, whether in the NHS or other parts of industry, protect one another as they go about their work tasks.

Public Health

Mark Jenkinson Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris]

If the hon. Gentleman is seeking to redress grievances as to what Labour party parties he has and has not been invited to, I am the wrong person to address those concerns to.

In order to build confidence in this issue, I ask the Minister to publish the guidance she and her colleagues have relied on that says that public transport and shops are areas of likely transmission but hospitality spaces, for example, are not. We do need to build confidence.

Anyone who has taken journeys on public transport in recent months will have seen at first hand a lack of compliance; that is of course just the Prime Minister, but beyond that all of us will have seen it on the tube and elsewhere on our commute.

[Mark Jenkinson (Workington) (Con)]

Like the hon. Gentleman, I have travelled on the tube in recent months and seen a lack of compliance, but enforcement on the tube is of course handed over to Transport for London officers. Does the hon. Gentleman think the Mayor of London should be doing more to enforce mask wearing on the tube?

[Alex Norris]

We will now start to see how effective these regulations are—they have only been going for nine and a half hours—but I will shortly address my reticence about members of staff whose primary job has not traditionally been to enforce such measures now being put in that position. That gets to the point my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) was addressing.

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[Dr Whitford]

The reason that my colleagues are not here is that the debate is largely about the regulations in England and we do not normally vote on English matters. We have not normally voted on England’s covid regulations, but the one related aspect in these proposals is the testing and isolation of travellers. We support that but we think that it should go further.

On domestic precautions, Scotland never got rid of mandatory masks on public transport, in shops and in schools. We have not heard the Minister refer to whether the Government are planning to reintroduce mask wearing in schools. At the moment, with vaccination and its impact, we are seeing that the bulge and peak of cases among those who are unvaccinated is moving down to younger and younger teenagers and primary school children. If there will not be masks in schools, is there a plan to install CO₂ monitoring and ventilation? How do we reduce the incidence in schools?

[Mark Jenkinson]

The hon. Lady perhaps answered some of this question, but will she set out her assessment of the impact of mask wearing in Scotland on case numbers? Is what has happened with younger children not just testament to how well we have done at keeping them apart and proof that we cannot hide from the virus when we come back together?

[Dr Whitford]

It is very difficult at the moment. Cases go up and down and we swap positions. At the moment, Scotland has the lowest incidence of cases at 349 per 100,000. Northern Ireland has the highest at well over 600 per 100,000. Obviously, we have whole baskets of measures, so it is harder—other than in the review that the Royal Society published last June and in the BMJ paper from a week ago—to pick out exactly which measures are having the impact. The BMJ found that masks and hand hygiene were equal in their impact and, in fact, bigger in their impact than physical distancing. To me, they enable people to engage and enable people who are vulnerable to feel safe and to come out, because otherwise, those who were shielding will be stuck in their houses all over again.

Although mask wearing was not mandatory in England, it has remained in this Government’s guidance if someone is in a busy public space. I am sorry to say that that guidance has been undermined by what Members on the Government Benches have demonstrated on television every day. Initially, when we came back in the autumn, approximately five people wore masks, then the number more than doubled to 14, and after the measure was pushed, the proportion rose to about two thirds. On the day when mask wearing in busy places is meant to be promoted, about a third of Government Members are still not wearing masks.

People will be led by the example of not just the Prime Minister, but every one of us.

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[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

’Tis the season to be jolly, Mr Deputy Speaker. As my colleagues know and as you know, I am always jolly, but it is not particularly jolly at the moment. [Interruption.] I did not hear that—I shall pretend that I did not.

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), whom I remember shadowing me well when I was a Health Minister. She makes very many good points, as always. Her point about vaccinating the rest of the world is absolutely right—I agree completely—but we certainly should not throw away intellectual property, because it would leave absolutely no incentive for us to produce what we have produced in this country, which is what has saved so many lives around the world. However, she is absolutely right that we should be doing more through our overseas aid effort to help the rest of the world.

It was bad enough when the extension of the Coronavirus Act 2020 was nodded through without a vote. There has been lots of excitement and flurry recently about Members of Parliament and the work that we do. There is now one Labour Back Bencher, one Liberal Democrat—albeit that she is one twelfth of the parliamentary party—and one Democratic Unionist party Member in the Chamber. I understand why SNP Members are not here in force, because they rightly do not vote on English matters, but I think that this is something that the public should be concerned about. We are making an impact on their lives today, and it is a disgrace that this House is so empty.

Is anybody other than the Minister going to speak in favour of the regulations today? In the House of Commons, in my experience of 11 and a half years, you do not just have to win the vote; you have to win the argument as well. Of course the Government will win the vote today, because the Opposition—who always say “How high do you want us to jump?” when the Government propose new restrictions on our lives—will pretend to ask difficult questions while voting for the restrictions anyway. They said that they would vote for them before they had even seen the published regulations. Frankly, I think that that is a derogation of duty from Her Majesty’s Opposition.

Okay—now I will try to be nice. I know Jenny Harries of the UK Health Security Agency well; I worked with her when I was a Health Minister. I am sorry to return to this point, but for the benefit of Ministers on the Front Bench, she said to the media this morning that people should not socialise

“when we don’t particularly need to”.

She also urged people to decrease social contact.

I understand that Downing Street has had to dismiss and distance itself from those comments this morning, and rightly so. Jenny Harries is a very careful and very professional public servant—as I say, I know her well—and she does not just say things off the cuff without thinking. If what she said is not the Government’s position, we need to know. The Minister is quite right to say, as I would have said myself, that she cannot speak for others and cannot comment on what others say, but she can say what she thinks and what the Government’s position is; that is the duty of a Minister at the Dispatch Box. If the Government do not agree with that position, it should have been said at the Dispatch Box this afternoon—ample opportunity was given for it to be said. But if that position is the policy of the Government, we are in completely different territory.

As for the regulations before the House, I do not even know where to start. They are the fly on the back of the rhinoceros. Let me start with the face coverings regulations, which expire on 20 December. I have to say that I do not much like them—I think that they go against the individual choice that my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady) talked about—but it is not a huge imposition on my life to wear a mask when I am in the Chamber. I choose to do so. Nor is wearing masks a huge imposition on the lives of my constituents, many of whom I see wearing them in all sorts of settings, including outside—that is their personal choice. To be honest, the face coverings regulations do not bother me greatly.

The self-isolation regulations bother me a great deal more. Under new regulation 2B(1)(ba)—I know; how are the public meant to follow this?—of the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation) (England) Regulations 2020, if one child in a class of 30 has had close contact with someone who

“is suspected of, or confirmed as, having an Omicron variant”,

presumably the other 29 are out. We are not just looking at a pingdemic in our economy and in our businesses; we are looking at a pingdemic that will devastate education again. After everything that we have learned—everything that I have felt in my own family—are we really, seriously, going to do that to our children again?

[Mark Jenkinson]

The explanatory memorandum tells us that the regulations make provision for

“NHS Test and Trace to notify an individual that they are a close contact”.

In fact, the detail of the legislation makes such provision not just for NHS Test and Trace, but for anyone in a local authority involved with communicable diseases.

One of my children was sent home before the school holidays to isolate for 10 days, despite being confirmed by the headteacher as not having been a close contact. That had a significant impact on the rest of the family, as hon. Members can imagine; it was based on the advice of a director of public health that the whole year group should isolate. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that this is lockdown by default, through activist directors of public health and others?

[Steve Brine]

I do not think I would call directors of public health “activists”, although I understand that some of them play it very differently from us. It is the job of this place to get legislation and regulations right, and if we draft them in a way that makes them so wide, so loose and so flexible that any director of public health could be an “activist” if so minded, it will lie at this door, not that door. I should like the Minister, in summing up the debate, to define “suspected”, because I think there is an element of the Salem witch trials in this. What is a “suspected” case? I should like an answer from the Dispatch Box, please, before I am asked to vote for this measure.

I said in the House yesterday that the regulations, in and of themselves, were relatively mild. I have already talked about face coverings. What concerns me is the chilling effect that this is having on the rest of our society. The fact that No. 10 Downing Street, the centre of government, has taken to the national newspapers today to ask head teachers not to cancel nativity plays because of the announcement that we made on Saturday night makes me ask, “What on earth are we doing?”

We should think of the effect that this is having on confidence, on society and on hospitality. Those in hospitality have put everything into this Christmas in order to survive and to save their year. There is nothing in these regulations that says Christmas parties must be cancelled—unless, of course, Dr Harries is in charge—but there is everything in the language and the narrative coming out of the Government right now that is causing Christmas parties to be cancelled left, right and centre. I have seen organisations in my constituency cancel events that were due to happen within the next few weeks, on a “just in case” basis. These regulations will have a chilling effect, and we should not underestimate that just because it is not written in black and white.

National Health Service

Mark Jenkinson Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

We have reviewed the huge number of responses to the consultation. Not everybody who responded supported the proposal—as my hon. Friend says, 57% did not—but it was interesting that the picture in care homes was fairly even between those who supported it and those who were concerned.

One thing that we are already seeing is that some care homes are bringing in the policy themselves.

[Mark Jenkinson (Workington) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Helen Whately]

I may pre-empt my hon. Friend’s point. I know that hon. Friends have asked why the Government need to bring in the policy if some care homes are doing it themselves. The problem is that we could risk a situation in which someone fortunate enough to be living in a care home that has required vaccination for its workers is highly protected against the virus, but someone less fortunate, in a care home in which far fewer staff are vaccinated, is unfortunately at much greater risk. That is not an inequality that any of us should be comfortable with.

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[Helen Whately]

I will sum up, as I know other colleagues wish to makes speeches.

I put on record my sincere thanks to care workers across the country, not just for their work throughout the pandemic but for all they bring to our health and care services. People working in care homes have played an incredibly important role in caring for those most at risk from this terrible virus. The vaccine is working, with more than 14,000 lives saved so far. It is only right that we take every possible step to protect those most at risk.

As I said at the outset, we must all ask ourselves what more we can do to protect care home residents, and these regulations are what we can do.

[Mark Jenkinson]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your advice on whether the vaccination figures cited by the Minister, which are more than a month out of date, might have inadvertently misled the House. Her earlier figures on the vaccination status of care home staff and residents suggest it simply is not possible for the figures both to have reached the SAGE threshold and to be as low as the House was informed.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point of order. Obviously, I cannot comment on figures the Minister may or may not have used. I am sure she will have heard what he said and, if there is anything that needs correcting, will do so in her summing up.

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[Sir Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale West) (Con)]

I agree with much of what the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) has said. I shall begin, as others have done, with the impact assessment—or the lack of one. I hope that the Minister will, on reflection, accept that it is simply wrong to bring these measures forward without giving the House the impact assessment in advance. She still has the opportunity to do something about this by withdrawing these measures and coming back at a later date, and I hope she will consider that.

This is a very serious innovation. Imposing a legal requirement for people to undertake a medical intervention, maybe against their will, is a remarkable change in our law. As the hon. Member for Twickenham said, it sets a serious precedent, and it is a precedent that the Minister herself slightly alarmingly raised when she said that covid and flu would be a problem as the winter approached. As yet, we are not talking about compulsory vaccination for flu, but once we begin down that road, where does it end?

The scope of this measure is unnecessary. As I said in my intervention, insisting that people are vaccinated even if they will have no contact whatsoever with residents of care homes is entirely unreasonable. The application of the measure to a plumber who comes to fix a boiler, or to a trustee of a charity who may go to sit in an office but have no contact in any of the areas where residents would be, would be unreasonable. The measure is also inconsistent. Why does it apply only to care workers and not more widely in the healthcare sector?

[Mark Jenkinson]

We heard from the Minister about the 99% vaccination uptake where an employer had mandated it themselves. Would it not be the case, as in the case that my hon. Friend set out with visitors, that if this was in departmental guidance, it would be incumbent on the care home to take cognisance of it in the risk assessment?

[Sir Graham Brady]

I agree with my hon. Friend. There are perfectly rational arrangements that could allow particular residents to insist on only a vaccinated carer being in attendance.

I want to focus in the brief time available on a specific point: the importance of respecting religious freedom. Lime Tree House in Sale in my constituency is one of only two Christian Science care homes in the country. The rights of Christian Scientists were protected by the Labour Government when the Care Standards Bill was introduced in 2000. The then Minister, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, gave an explicit assurance in the House of Lords:

“Perhaps I may say right at the start that the Government have no intention of preventing or discouraging people from being cared for in accordance with the principles and practices of the Church of Christ, Scientist. The Care Standards Bill will not mean that Christian Science houses or their visiting nurse services will have to give medical treatment to their patients, or do anything else which would go against their religious principles...The Department of Health will consult and work with the Church of Christ, Scientist, to ensure that regulation by the commission is compatible with the church’s principles and practices.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 March 2000; Vol. 611, c. 741.]

Christian Scientists responded to the consultation in May. Since then, they have written to the Minister and indeed the new Secretary of State—obviously, that was very recently—but have not received a response. Clearly, there is no provision in the legislation to protect this important principle.

May I ask the Minister when she responds to give an absolute assurance that the principle of religious freedom will be respected by the Government, as it was by previous Governments? Will she undertake either to introduce an amended statutory instrument in the House or, if not, will she commit to including matters of conscience in the exemptions provided for in the measure? I am talking about two small care homes, a handful of residents and a situation in which both residents and carers might prefer not to have a medical intervention inflicted on them against their will, but a very big principle is at stake.

Covid-19 Update

Mark Jenkinson Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

On children and covid—the hon. Gentleman asked about long covid—a huge amount of research is being done both in the NHS and in my Department. I mentioned, for example, the extra £50 million of funding that we are providing to do even more research and to step this up. As he knows, long covid is a problem the world over, and I hope that the UK can become a world leader in trying to help with this problem and share the research that it does with other countries. On the vaccination of children, as I said in response to a similar question, the JCVI is actively looking at this issue. Once we have its final advice, we will set out our plans.

[Mark Jenkinson (Workington) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s confirmation of the return of our freedoms. Knowing what we do now about the impact of some of our interventions, we must never return to those dark days. While we have taken a huge backward step in this regard, does he agree that we should use this great unlock to usher in a new era of personal responsibility? Perhaps we could start with a review of clause 125 of the Health and Care Bill, which would appear, on the face of it, to prevent UK food manufacturers from advertising their products anywhere online, not just in the UK, while conferring advantage on huge, globally recognised brands.

[Sajid Javid]

Obesity is a real problem in this country and others and its causes are very complex, but we do want to make sure that we have the best approach possible. My hon. Friend will know that we are planning to debate this Bill on Wednesday and I look forward to seeing him in the debate.

Coronavirus Vaccine

Mark Jenkinson Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mark Jenkinson (Workington) (Con)]

May I place on record my thanks to Kate Bingham and the vaccines taskforce, as well as all the Government Departments that have played their part in this welcome announcement, particularly the part played by my right hon. Friend? Does he agree that as community testing and vaccines are rolled out throughout the winter and into the spring, the need even for localised restrictions will gradually be reduced and that life can begin to return to something closer to normality for my constituents?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes. I have good news for the people of Workington and the whole country, which is that suppressing the virus using these restrictions until a vaccine came along has been the strategy all along, and we can just start to see the light at the end of the tunnel getting much brighter because we know we now have a vaccine.