Covid-19 Update

Peter Bone Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s question. On the PCR testing capacity, it is 600,000 per day. I looked at the data this morning for yesterday, and I think just about half of that was being utilised—300,000-odd tests. Of course, that does not include the millions of lateral flow tests that we are also capable of delivering.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con) [V]]

Last Tuesday, the House passed a statutory instrument making it compulsory for care home staff to be vaccinated. The last time compulsory vaccination occurred was in the 19th century. I was slightly confused by what the excellent Minister said in his statement, so could he confirm that a full impact assessment was completed before this contentious legislation came to the Floor of the House and that he saw that assessment before signing off on the policy? After all, this was a major change in Government policy.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his excellent question. As I mentioned in my statement, an impact statement has been published today, and a full impact assessment will be made. Just to bring it to life for him, to reassure him and the House, I can say that Barchester Healthcare, one of the providers, has about 16,000 employees, so it is quite a large sample to look at, and it has implemented this policy early. When it consulted its workforce on the duty of deployment, it managed successfully to get the workforce to be vaccinated —they were on a priority list in phase 1 of the vaccination programme—and only 78 out of the workforce of 16,000, or about 0.5%, actually chose not to and no longer work for Barchester Healthcare. I hope that gives him some reassurance that we look at this data very carefully.