- 1:38 pm
- With permission, I would like to make a statement about the coronavirus vaccine.Today marks a new chapter in our fight against this virus. Ever since the pandemic hit our shores almost a year ago, we have known that a vaccine would be critical to set us free. So all through this arduous year—it has been an arduous year—while we have been working night and day to fight the virus and keep it under control, we have been striving, too, to develop the vaccines that can give us hope and let us eventually release the curbs on our freedoms that have bound us for so long.Thanks to the incredible work of the vaccine taskforce, the Business Secretary and Kate Bingham, we have already amassed a huge portfolio of different vaccine candidates. We have backed seven vaccines and ordered 357 million doses on behalf of the whole UK, one of the biggest portfolios per capita in the world. We have said from the start that a vaccine must be safe and effective before we would even consider deploying it. Any vaccine must go through a rigorous process of clinical trials, involving thousands of people and extensive independent scrutiny from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, one of the world’s most respected medical regulators.Today, I am delighted to inform the House that the MHRA has issued the clinical authorisation of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. This is a monumental step forward. It is no longer “if” there is going to be a vaccine, but “when”. In our battle against the virus, help is on its way. Today is a triumph for all those who believe in science, a triumph for ingenuity and a triumph for humanity, and I thank everyone who has played their part in this achievement. I thank the team at Pfizer, the team of scientists at BioNTech, the volunteers who stepped up and took part in clinical trials, and the MHRA itself, which made sure that this is a vaccine we can all have faith in. Thanks to their efforts, I can confirm that the UK is the first country in the world to have a clinically approved coronavirus vaccine for supply, and now our task is to make use of the fruits of that scientific endeavour to save lives.We spent months preparing for this day, so that as soon as we got the green light, we would be ready to go. We were the first country in the world to pre-order supplies of this successful vaccine, and we have 40 million doses pre-ordered for delivery over the coming months—enough for 20 million people, because two jabs are required for each person. Following authorisation, the next stage is to test each batch of the vaccine for safety. I can confirm that batch testing has been completed this morning for the first deployment of 800,000 doses of vaccine. Those doses are for the whole United Kingdom. This morning, I chaired a meeting of Health Ministers from the devolved Administrations to ensure the roll-out is co-ordinated nationwide.This will be one of the biggest civilian logistical efforts that we have faced as a nation. It will be difficult. There will be challenges and complications, but I know that the NHS is equal to the task. Rolling out the vaccine, free at the point of delivery and according to clinical need, not ability to pay, is in the finest tradition of our national health service, and I am delighted to confirm that the NHS will be able to start vaccinating early next week.The whole purpose of the vaccine is to protect people from covid, so that we can get lives back to normal. We will prioritise the groups who are at greatest risk. This morning, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation published its advice, setting out the order of priority according to clinical need, and that includes care home residents and their carers, the over-80s and frontline health and social care workers. We will deliver according to clinical prioritisation and operational necessity. The need to hold the vaccine at minus 70 ˚C makes it particularly challenging to deploy.While we begin vaccination next week, the bulk of the vaccinations will be in the new year. I urge anyone called forward for vaccination by the NHS to respond quickly to protect themselves, their loved ones and their community.Over the next few months, we will see vaccines delivered in three different ways. First, we will begin vaccinations in hospital hubs. Secondly, we will deploy through local community services, including GPs and in due course pharmacies, too. Thirdly, we will stand up vaccination centres in conference centres and sports venues, for example, to vaccinate large numbers of people as more vaccines come on stream. This is an important step, but we are not there yet, so I stress that we must all keep playing our part, keep following the new rules that the House approved overwhelmingly yesterday and remember the basics, such as “Hands, face space”, and, “Get a test”, which we know from experience are so important in keeping the virus under control.Before I finish, may I also update the House on another bit of good news? I am absolutely thrilled to say that, From today, we can safely allow visits in care homes for those who test negative for covid-19. Coronavirus has denied so many people the simple pleasure of seeing a loved one, which is so precious to so many, especially in our care homes. This is possible only because of the success we have had in building one of the biggest testing capacities in Europe, with local and national teams working together, side by side—something we have often discussed right across this House. We have worked hard on testing. We have worked hard on the vaccine. Our strategy is suppressing the virus until a vaccine can make us safe. That strategy is working, and I am delighted that we will be able to see families and friends come together ahead of Christmas, thanks to this improvement.This is a day to remember, in a year to forget. We can see the way out of this, but we are not there yet, so let us keep our resolve, and keep doing our bit to keep people safe until science can make us free.
- 1:45 pm
- Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)As always, I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. This is indeed fantastic news about the Pfizer vaccine, and I join him in congratulating all who have been involved in making this happen. We have rightly clapped carers throughout this crisis. I wonder whether we should as a nation come together and applaud our scientists as well one evening. It is also incumbent on all of us across the House to reinforce the case that vaccination saves lives, and if it helps, I will stand alongside the Secretary State, socially distanced of course, on any platform or in any TV studio to show that we are united cross-party in promoting vaccination.Our constituents will have legitimate questions and they should not be ridiculed for asking them, so will the Secretary of State launch a large-scale public information campaign to answer questions and encourage uptake? Will he consider sending a pamphlet, perhaps, to every household? We know that dangerous myths circulate on social media, and we repeat our offer to work with Ministers to curb online harms. I hope we can work together and take something forward on that front.Hospital trust staff will start receiving this vaccine first. I understand that it is a massive logistical exercise, given the temperatures and the need for two doses, but could the Secretary of State tell us how many NHS staff he expects to be vaccinated by January, which is of course the time when we expect the NHS to be under the most pressure?Where does this leave social care and care home residents and staff? There are concerns that this particular vaccine cannot be moved multiple times to care homes, so can he set out exactly how and when care home residents will receive a vaccine? Our constituents will want to know: when will primary care networks start rolling out vaccination, and when will the mass vaccination centres he has reported to the House start opening in our communities?We have historic strengths as a country with vaccination, but in recent years we have lost our measles-free status. We know that vaccination rates can be lower in poorer and vulnerable communities and that covid has often had a disproportionate impact in these communities, so will he ensure that there is a health inequalities strategy as well in his vaccination campaign, so that black and minority ethnic groups, and the poorest and the vulnerable, do not miss out on this vaccine?I think we all understand that restrictions will have to remain in place for some time, but can the Secretary of State offer us a timeframe or a target for when we should expect to achieve herd immunity and life gets back to normal? Will he consider publishing a route map of what restrictions could be relaxed as vaccination rates increase? In the meantime, if someone is vaccinated, will they still have to isolate if contacted by Test and Trace, or are they now released from that obligation?
- The hon. Gentleman has worked supportively and constructively with the Government throughout this pandemic. I pay tribute to the approach that he has taken, and that he took again today.I stand with the hon. Gentleman in saying that vaccinations save lives. If we can encourage anybody who might be hesitant to take a vaccine by appearing together to be vaccinated together, of course I would be happy to do that. I recommend that we have a professional vaccinate us, of course—I do not think that he would trust me to do it.The hon. Gentleman asked for a public information campaign, and there will of course be one. He asked about health inequalities, which are a very important consideration. The best thing to support tackling health inequalities is the fact that we have a vaccine, but we absolutely need to reach all parts and all communities across the whole country.The hon. Gentleman asked how many will be vaccinated by January. While today brings more certainty, it does not end all uncertainties. We have 800,000 doses that have now passed the batch testing, but the total number to be manufactured over this timeframe is not yet known, because it is all dependent on the manufacturing process, which is itself complicated. After all, this is not a chemical but a biological product, so I cannot answer the question—that is as yet unknowable.The hon. Gentleman asked when the primary care networks and the centres will open. The answer is very soon. We have 50 hospital hubs ready to go from next week. The PCNs are also being stood up, and the centres outside hospitals. They are all coming very soon.The hon. Gentleman then asked when we will be able to lift restrictions. Of course, I understand why not only he but almost everybody in the country wants to know the answer to this question: how many people do we have to vaccinate before we can start lifting the restrictions? The answer is that, while we know that the vaccine protects an individual with a 95% efficacy, we do not know the impact of the vaccine on reducing transmission, because of the problem of asymptomatic transmission, which has so bedevilled our response to this virus and made it so hard to tackle.
- I congratulate my right hon. Friend on this moment and the Government on the news about the Pfizer vaccine, but please can we continue to have increased honesty about what we still do not know? We do not know how long the immunity will last, we do not even know whether people who have been vaccinated can still transmit the disease, and of course we do not know whether tier 2 restrictions will succeed in bringing the R rate down. Until we can answer those questions, we will continue to need maximum effort behind contact tracing and isolation of virus spreaders.Councils including Essex County Council need daily access to all the positive cases recorded by NHS Test and Trace immediately and without delay, so that they can make their own operations effective, so why are they having to wait 48 to 72 hours before they get the data? Also, what are the Government going to do to engage districts and their community volunteer hubs to help to persuade people to support those who must still isolate even if they have been vaccinated?
- Dealing with the pandemic has been a case of dealing with uncertainty in large degree. Today we have more certainty because we know this vaccine is safe and effective, but just as I said to the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) that we do not know the effect of the vaccine on transmission, so, as my hon. Friend says, we do not know the longevity of its effectiveness.My hon. Friend is right about another part of public health advice that all of us as local representatives can play a part in promoting: that is, engagement with contact tracing. I will write to him about access to daily data in Essex. Of course we have to wait until the test result comes in, which can sometimes lead to delay, even though the results of the majority of tests done in person now come back within 24 hours, but I agree with him in principle, so let us make it a reality in practice.
- As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on vaccinations for all, I welcome the authorisation of the Pfizer vaccine and echo the shadow Secretary of State’s call for a public health campaign to encourage uptake. It will naturally take some time before the vaccine is widely available, so we all still need to stick to the rules and ensure that we can test, trace, isolate and support all those carrying the virus.Last week, the Secretary of State claimed that the pilot project of mass testing in Liverpool was responsible for driving down cases, despite the city having been under lockdown for much of the time. Lateral flow tests miss up to 40% of cases, so the Government’s plan to use them to free people from isolation are causing concern among many public health and screening experts. When will the formal assessment of the pilot be published, and how can he justify already putting out tenders for £40 billion-worth of contracts to extend that approach without scientific evaluation? Would it not be better to invest some of that money in getting the traditional test, trace and isolate system working properly? Six months on, the Serco and Sitel system has still not improved, and over 40% of contacts in England are still not being informed that they should be isolating.The Secretary of State does not often talk about it, but he knows that it is not testing but isolation that stops the spread of the virus, so if people who are carrying the virus are not isolating, no amount of mass testing will stop the spread. When I raised the King’s College London report last week which found that less than 20% of cases and only 10% of contacts were isolating, the Secretary of State claimed that the Government have data showing much higher compliance. Can he tell us the figures for isolation rates for those with covid and their contacts? People will not stay off work if it means that they cannot feed their families, so is he concerned at reports that many requests for the isolation payment are being refused? How will he ensure that those carrying the virus are financially supported to enable them to isolate and reduce its spread?
- The hon. Lady says that I do not talk about contact tracing very much. I was literally answering a question on contact tracing just before her question— I talk of little else. We are publishing further data tomorrow on contact tracing, precisely in response to the question that she asks. She will see that the continued improvement of our contact tracing across the country is advancing further. I cannot say any more than that, because the figures are not being released until tomorrow.The hon. Lady asked about scientific evaluation. We are constantly scientifically evaluating the work that is going on, especially in Liverpool. That is one of the things that the scientists who work as part of my team, in NHS Test and Trace and in Public Health England do. It is a matter of constant scientific evaluation, but we will not wait until ages after something has finished to do an excessively long evaluation. We have to evaluate as we go along, because we are constantly trying to improve the response to this pandemic, and we are constantly trying to learn. I urge her to support the approach of constant learning and constant improvement. We will have to do that through the roll-out of the vaccine too.
- indicated dissent.
- The hon. Lady shakes her head, but that is how we have to deal with a pandemic in practice.
- This is a huge personal triumph for the Health Secretary, who has always backed the science. In choosing and backing on behalf of the country the first vaccine to prove efficacious, he has scored a massive goal for the country; he deserves great credit for that. It will also have global significance. I was in a meeting with the World Health Organisation this morning, which congratulated the UK on being the first country to approve a vaccine, because it will encourage other countries around the world to approve vaccines faster.I want to ask the Health Secretary about something different, which is the plight of people with learning disabilities. He will know that Public Health England says that they are two to four times more likely to die from covid. The news he has given this morning about people in care homes is tremendously welcome, but people with learning disabilities often feel that they are forgotten, particularly those in supported accommodation. Will he redouble his efforts to ensure that they, too, are able to be reunited with their families ahead of Christmas?
- My right hon. Friend is gracious and kind in what he says, and I welcome the WHO’s comments this morning. It has supported the UK approach and rightly commended the MHRA, our independent regulator. It has followed all the same steps that any high-quality regulator would, should and will, but it has followed them rapidly and sometimes in parallel, instead of one after the other. That is how we have got to the position of being the first country in the world to have a vaccine that is clinically authorised; it is because the MHRA has done a brilliant job, working with Pfizer and BioNTech, to make sure that the same safety considerations are looked at but in a way that made the process as fast as is feasibly and safely possible. The WHO has backed that approach. Regulators around the world could take a look at the MHRA, and we should all congratulate it.My right hon. Friend rightly asks about making sure we vaccinate those with learning disabilities and offer them vaccination at the right point in the prioritisation. I have discussed that important consideration directly with the JCVI, which takes into account the higher mortality of those with any given condition and has done so in the prioritisation that it set out this morning. Age is the single biggest determinant of mortality from coronavirus, which is why age is the predominant factor in the prioritisation, but it is not the only one. That matter has been considered by the JCVI and it is important that we accept and follow the JCVI advice as much as is practicable in the delivery and deployment of this vaccine.
- It is, indeed, a fantastic day. I add my thanks and congratulations to everybody who has been involved in getting us to this point, not just in the UK but worldwide, because this is a great example of global scientific collaboration. May I also pick up on the point about batch testing, which the Secretary of State mentioned on the radio this morning and in his statement? Will he confirm that if we signed up to a mutual recognition agreement with the EU, we would not need to batch-test the vaccine again once it arrived in the UK, which could slow down the process, not least because having enough qualified persons to do the batch release testing could be a real challenge? Is he working on a mutual recognition agreement?
- We have that mutual recognition agreement in place now. The hon. Lady is right to point to the global scientific work—work between UK scientists and scientists based in the UK, German scientists at BioNTech, the American scientists and the Belgians, who are producing and manufacturing this vaccine. The approach has been about people coming together right around the world, and the UK has put more into the global search for a vaccine in cash terms than any other country; despite our medium size as a nation, we have been the most generous, and I am really proud of that.
- It is great news about the vaccine, and, on behalf of the residents of Ashfield and Eastwood, let me say a big thanks to the Health Secretary, the scientists and the pharmaceutical companies.The small businesses in Ashfield and Eastwood have taken a massive financial hit during lockdown, despite doing their very best to be covid-secure, while supermarkets have recorded record profits. I have received lots of complaints this week from customers and staff at local supermarkets who say that the stores are overcrowded and not covid-safe; this is happening all over the country and is unfair to the small businesses, which have been hit the hardest. While the UK is being vaccinated, in the run-up to Christmas traders in my constituency will do their very best to beat the virus. Will my right hon. Friend therefore please remind the supermarket executives that they have a duty to protect their staff, customers, our NHS and the whole of the UK in order to beat the virus and get our lives back?
- Yes, I am very happy from this Dispatch Box to remind the supermarkets of their responsibilities to follow covid-secure guidelines and ensure that they are in place for their customers and staff. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for standing up for the small businesses of Ashfield. It is tough in Ashfield at the moment—I get that. We have the restrictions in place only because they are absolutely necessary. I know that he understands that. He is a strong voice in this Chamber for all the small businesses and residents of Ashfield.
- What a joy it was at 7 o’clock this morning to see this news being broken, and to see the Secretary of State as well. I put on the record my thanks to the Secretary of State and all his team for making this happen.Is the Secretary of State aware that there are still those who are unable to access their flu vaccine? What steps have been taken to ensure that the flu vaccine roll-out is completed before the corona programme begins? What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the Northern Ireland Assembly on providing vaccines and, more importantly, on the roll-out for our vulnerable and our frontline key workers?
- I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. It has been a big team effort. I echo his thanks to the whole team.We have a further tranche of flu vaccines ready to go; that is just about to be rolled out. Making sure that flu vaccines are available right across the UK is very important. It is an issue that Robin Swann—my opposite number in the Northern Ireland Administration—and I have worked on extensively. He is incredibly diligent in ensuring that we get the flu vaccines rolled out to Northern Ireland. There is an interaction between the massive flu vaccine roll-out programme, which the NHS does every year but which this year is bigger than ever, and at the same time having to do a covid vaccine roll-out. We have taken that into account in the plans. In fact, before the announcement at 6.30 this morning, I was talking to Robin Swann on the phone, which shows how hard-working he is.