Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the impact of the covid-19 vaccine mandate for care home staff on the provision of health and care across (a) emergency services, (b) hospital treatment, (c) care homes and domiciliary care and (d) other sectors; and what steps he plans to take to use that information to inform potential future policy decisions on any further vaccine mandates.

The Department published impact assessments of vaccination as a condition of deployment in care homes and health and social care sector, including domiciliary care. In care homes this estimated 40,000 staff may leave and highlighted the benefits of implementation, including reduced hospital admissions and cost of hospital treatment. In health and wider social care, we estimated 88,000 National Health Service staff and 35,000 staff in other care services may not have met the vaccination requirements by 31 March 2022. Following public consultation, regulations to revoke these requirements in all health and care settings came into force on 15 March 2022. Emergency services executing their duties were exempt from the care home requirements.