Covid-19 Vaccine Roll-out

Naz Shah Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The way we have organised the primary care roll-out is through networks of GP practices—primary care networks, as they are called—so that if one GP practice is under particular pressure, for instance because it may be carrying vacancies, the effort can be put together over a wider network of GP practices. The funding support for GPs to deliver this vaccine, as with the flu vaccine, is negotiated and agreed with the British Medical Association and is part of the operational roll-out of the vaccine in my hon. Friend’s constituency and elsewhere across the country.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

First, may I add my thanks to everybody who has put in the effort to ensure that we get the vaccine? That is lovely news, but unfortunately once again this Government are failing to plan. My clinical commissioning group was given 24 hours to get together the GP practices to roll out the vaccines, and the criterion was 1,500 over-80s. The fact that places such as Bradford West and inner cities have nine years’ less life expectancy and 16 years’ more ill-health means that the three centres that have been set up are in affluent areas. Not a single one is in inner-city Bradford, yet the Government’s own review accepts that covid disproportionately affects black and minority ethnic communities. When will the Government stop discriminating against those who live in inner-city areas, and prioritise them because of their health risks?

[Matt Hancock]

The roll-out of the vaccine is being managed by the NHS, and it is entirely unfair of the hon. Lady to describe the NHS in that way.