Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to promote the uptake of the covid-19 vaccine among social care staff; and if he will publish figures on the number of care workers who have (a) received and (b) refused to have the vaccine.

A five-week consultation was launched on 14 April to inform decision-making to make vaccination a condition of staff deployment in older adult care home providers. We have also introduced a minimum four-visit schedule to ensure as many care home staff and residents can be vaccinated on-site as possible. For those workers who may not have been present when the vaccination team visited the specific care home, access via other vaccination services has been available. Care home workers who would like to be vaccinated can now also arrange vaccination directly through their general practitioner.

Additionally, a significant programme of work is underway to help boost uptake in all communities, including for care workers and social care staff, as set out in the UK COVID-19 Uptake Plan which is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccination-uptake-plan/uk-covid-19-vaccine-uptake-plan

NHS England publish weekly data on the number of vaccines doses administered to National Health Service trust and social care staff in England, which is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-vaccinations/

Data on those who refuse the COVID-19 vaccine is not collected centrally.