Public Health

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

We are, as the hon. Lady would imagine, working very closely with directors of public health throughout England, whether on testing or other areas. On PCR testing capacity specifically, capacity is usually roughly 600,000 a day, but it is already being expanded to about 800,000 a day, and it will be further expanded. It is important for hon. Members to know that testing is released at different times of day, so if someone checks the system and a test is not available, it might be available in their local area in the next couple of hours—it is not just a day-by-day process. As the process is surged, tests will become much more easily available. It is also important to remind people whenever one can that a PCR test should be used only if someone has symptoms; otherwise, lateral flow tests should be deployed.

Finally, I turn to measures to help keep the health and care system safe for the long term by making vaccination a condition of deployment for more health and social care settings. Across the UK, the overwhelming majority of us have made the positive choice to accept the offer of a vaccination against covid-19, and 91% of NHS staff have already had two doses, but we need that figure to go even higher. Uptake rates vary among health and care organisations and across the country; despite the incredible effort to boost uptake across the country, approximately 94,000 NHS staff are still unvaccinated. It is critical to patient safety that health and care staff get the jab to protect some of the most vulnerable people who are in their care and keep the NHS workforce strong in the wake of omicron.

We made vaccination against covid-19 a condition of deployment in care homes from 11 November this year. Contrary to what some people feared, we are not aware of any care home closures in which vaccination as a condition of deployment has been the primary cause. The regulations that we are putting before the House today will extend that requirement to health and other social care settings.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

The Secretary of State pointed out that the capacity of the health service is important and should not be breached. If 9% of staff to date have decided not to be vaccinated and will presumably stick with that decision, how does he expect that that will not reduce the capacity of the health service in future? Is it not a fact that there are already many people staying in hospital because a care home cannot be facilitated owing to lack of staff?

[Sajid Javid]

The right hon. Gentleman asks a fair question. I will answer precisely that question in just a moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wes Streeting]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Of course, in order for this measure to work as effectively as we would wish, there has to be an adequate supply of lateral flow tests. I heard what the Secretary of State said yesterday about the availability of testing, but it is no good if the tests are in the warehouse; they need to be available to people where they need them, when they need them. We have had supply issues and those really do need to be resolved, not least in the light of other measures, which I will come to shortly.

[Sammy Wilson]

Does the shadow Secretary of State not accept that rather than giving confidence to people, these measures, and the background against which they have been introduced, have actually reduced confidence? We have predictions of 75,000 deaths and we are telling people that they cannot go to venues unless they have certain tests; the experience in Northern Ireland is that the hospitality industry has already lost millions of pounds in orders coming up to the Christmas period because people are afraid to go out.