Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Peter Kyle

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who was a doughty champion of her maintained nurseries even in my time as Children and Families Minister. I am happy to meet her to go through the details that are specific to her schools, but the additional funding has been welcomed by the maintained nursery sector.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State to his post, and I welcome the other Ministers who are new in post. Despite our political differences, I hold them all in very high personal regard.

On 19 July, I put it to the Secretary of State, who was then Vaccines Minister, that the only way to have stability in schools come the autumn term and to protect the wellbeing of students would be to offer the vaccine over the summer months. He chose not to. As a result, just in recent days, I spoke to a principal who said that schools are no longer primarily places of learning; they are logistical centres, performing twice-weekly testing, facilitating the vaccine roll-out and dealing with local covid outbreaks. Instead of having a wall of protected adults, which the Secretary of State told me would be the case, students are faced with a wall of pinched and angry anti-vaxxers, who are preventing them from getting into school by bullying and harassing, and interrupting their school flow. Will he accept Labour’s proposal for exclusion zones around schools for the duration of any vaccine roll-out programme, and will he apologise to the 200,000 students and their families who are currently off school because he chose not to implement the measures that would have kept them there?

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Peter Kyle

Monday 19th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My right hon. Friend always makes thoughtful and important interventions and I take his words incredibly seriously on both questions. One was about sharing with the House the evidence and working with the industry, whether it is the nightclub industry or at-risk large-scale indoor events. As I mentioned in my statement, we will come back to the House with that evidence. On the self-isolation issue, I hope he agrees that this was the right thing to do for frontline health and social care staff and for critical workers. The important thing is the clinical evidence. The chief medical officer’s very clear advice is that, as we go through step 4, we should have that additional buffer, if I can call it that, and continue to double vaccinate to allow us a bit more time to ensure that people who are double vaccinated can then come out of self-isolation because we can move to a PCR-negative or daily testing regime. That is the right thing to do. We will keep it under review, and I take his words very seriously.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

Come September, the settings that will be most vulnerable to covid will be schools. School classrooms are going to have a higher percentage of non-vaccinated people than anywhere else. The Government have scrapped the need for face masks and the bubbling system, and they have now forbidden schools and nurseries from doing in-house track and trace and forced them on to the failing nationwide track and trace system. I understand why we need to be really sensitive and cautious about vaccinating young people aged 12-plus, and I am cognisant of the comments made by the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson). However, in other areas, the JCVI has ensured that we are at the forefront of the global vaccination programme.

Could the Minister explain the conversations he has been having with the JCVI as to why the Government are being so cautious in this regard? Will he explain to the House when the JCVI will give updated advice, because really those young people should be vaccinated over the summer if it is safe? To be very clear, I am not asking for a forced programme for children. I am asking for this to become available when the JCVI says it is safe, and for parents and families to have all the information they need so that they can make the decision on behalf of the interests of the child, the family and the community, and take into account educational scarring as well.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The hon. Member asks a really important question; it is one that we have asked the JCVI. There will be two supervised tests on return to school, but the other advantage will be the wall of vaccinated adults that will continue to increase.

[Peter Kyle]

One teacher; 35 children.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I hear the hon. Member and I absolutely understand. That is why the JCVI will continue to review the data on the vaccination of children. Specifically on his question, it has a concern. It has received data from around the world; from countries that are already vaccinating. We are with those countries at the forefront, but at the moment we are an outlier as they have chosen to move forward on children’s vaccination and we have not fully; we are moving forward for children who are vulnerable and those who live with vulnerable adults. It wants to look at second-dose data; at the moment it has first-dose data. There is a very rare signal of myocarditis that it is concerned about and it wants to see second-dose data from places such as the United States before it makes its decision. That decision, however, is under review.