National Health Service

William Wragg Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was indeed intending to come to that point. I was commencing my speech by giving some further context, but I can respond to the specific point made by my hon. Friend. The impact assessment is being worked on. I will be clear with hon. Members. One of the challenges is that there is significant uncertainty about the level of behavioural change we may see in the weeks ahead from this and other measures, for instance the requirement for vaccination to travel to some countries, which we anticipate will lead to further vaccination uptake.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Helen Whately]

If my hon. Friend will let me, I will cover his exact point.

I know that some hon. Members may wish to delay this debate, because they wish to review—

[Mr Wragg]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. It states in the explanatory notes:

“A full Impact Assessment has been prepared”.

If it has been prepared, it cannot currently be in preparation. So where is it?

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Whately]

We live in an uncertain world, but we know that covid is a killer for people living in care homes and we know that the winter ahead of us is going to be challenging both because of the ongoing circulation of covid and because of flu. The question we should put to ourselves today is: what are the steps that we can take to make people safer in the months ahead? This time last year—last summer—infection rates were low, but we did not sit back and say, “In that case, it’s going to be okay for the winter.” We in Government, working with local authorities and care homes, made preparations for the winter ahead. Thank goodness we did make those preparations. Although sadly there were many deaths, had we not put in place the personal protective equipment distribution system, had we not had the level of regular testing that went on in care homes throughout the winter, and had we not had the support with infection prevention and control, I fear that last winter would have been much worse. We know that the winter ahead is going to be another challenging one and we must prepare for it.

[Mr Wragg]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Will the Minister give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Wragg]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. To assist the debate, there is a discrepancy between the explanatory memorandum and the explanatory note on the back of the statutory instrument. The note states:

“A full impact assessment of the costs and benefits of this instrument is available from the Department of Health”.

It gives the Department’s address and indeed the website on which the assessment is supposedly published. So is the explanatory note in the instrument correct or not?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Again, this is not a matter for the Chair, but it is certainly a point for the Minister to address. I think it would be helpful if the Minister could directly address that particular issue, which many Members are now raising.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Whately]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies recommends that 80% of staff and 90% of residents should be vaccinated in any care home, at a minimum, to provide protection against outbreaks of covid. While the majority of care home workers have now been vaccinated, our most recent data has told us that only 65% of older-age care homes in England were meeting that safe minimum level, and the figure fell to 44% in London. That is why the instrument is being put forward today. It means that, by November, subject to parliamentary approval and a subsequent 16-week grace period, anyone entering a Care Quality Commission-registered care home in England must be vaccinated unless an exemption applies. That will apply to all workers employed by the care home, those employed by an agency and volunteers in the care home. Those entering care homes to undertake other work, for example, healthcare workers, tradespeople, hairdressers and CQC inspectors, will all have to follow the regulations.

The introduction of this policy has not been taken lightly. We have consulted extensively, including with a wide range of valued stakeholders, and used their feedback to inform this legislation. We recognise that some people feel that workers should have freedom of choice about vaccination, while others do it as a duty of care to protect the people most at risk. I know from speaking directly to people who receive care and to those who have relatives living in care homes that, although they might not be sure about requiring all care workers to be vaccinated, they are sure that they, individually, want to be cared for by someone who has been fully vaccinated. Many people have little choice about who cares for them.

[Mr Wragg]

The Minister mentions feedback, but the draft explanatory memorandum states that

“a majority (57%) of respondents did not support the proposal”.

How, therefore, does the feedback show that there is support for it?

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer), and indeed the speaker before him, my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans). They are two learned medical practitioners who, with the underlying qualities that seem to attract to those positions, state their arguments in the finest tradition of the empirical method. As ever, I hope I can be forgiven for not being quite as rational as those two speakers.

I hope, too, that the House will indulge me because, frankly, I am in despair. We could perhaps have a painting next to me of Munch’s “The Scream” to get a sense of how I feel about the conduct of Government business in this House. The Government are treating this House with utter contempt: 90 minutes on a statutory instrument to fundamentally change the balance of human rights in this country is nothing short of a disgrace. It is a disgrace, too, that no impact assessment exists. I contend that it does not exist, and if that is proven to be the case I am afraid my hon. Friend the Minister will be in a tricky position if she contends it does when it does not.

The measures before us are in themselves entirely impractical. We have heard already about concerns about the workforce. I have the utmost respect for my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge, as he knows, but if we were to follow his suggestion, I fear that it would be far too late to repair the damage done to the workforce of carers in this country.

It is an insult to care workers in this country that all they merit is 90 minutes on a motion that nobody here seemed to know anything about last week but which we are discussing this afternoon. Meanwhile, so many of our colleagues, presumably because of the proxy vote system and the fact that they find it generally inconvenient to be a Member of Parliament, will know nothing at all about the measures on which they are voting, and that too should concern us a great deal. I will vote against these measures, if that had not been made clear from my remarks so far.

I believe that 1898 was last time vaccination was mandated in this country, and following that mandate, the rates of vaccination fell. That should tell us all we need to know. We will give succour to lunatics and crackpots who advance ridiculous theories about vaccination if we mandate vaccination. The triumph of the vaccination programme has been the act of kindness that people have felt towards their fellow citizens in doing so, and we will lose that good will if we mandate it.

A lady called me a week or so ago, and she was in tears on the phone. She has a condition that involves blood clots, and she associated the news about one or two of the vaccines with her condition. She is a care worker, and she was distraught. She now equates her illness and the vaccination—and the fact that she cannot get a GP appointment to discuss it, but that is a different matter—with losing her job. Is that what we are prepared to do to our fellow citizens as a Conservative Government? Absolute lunacy! We would expect this in a communist country, which partly explains why so many of our eastern European fellow citizens have the scepticism they do, knowing the nature of the state and how it can be perceived as being malevolent.

This instrument is an abomination. It should be withdrawn, and the Government should stop treating this House with contempt.