Covid-19: Government Response

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make a statement on the Government’s response to covid-19.

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for his question and for the opportunity to answer questions from across the House in addition to my oral statement later this morning. Before I do so, I want to underline our commitment to keeping the House informed.

Yesterday’s announcement on the procurement of new antiviral treatments was made to Parliament via a written ministerial statement. The purpose of the Secretary of State’s press conference was to appeal directly to the public to come forward for their vaccines, including the 4.7 million people over the age of 18 in England who have not accepted the vaccine. We need those who are eligible to do so to take up the offer of a booster jab as we pursue plan A to its full extent.

I thank the Minister for that answer.

Yesterday the Secretary of State said that the pressures on the NHS were sustainable, but we are seeing ambulances backed up outside hospitals, patients waiting hour upon hour in A&E, cancer operations cancelled, and NHS staff exhausted. Has there ever been, in the history of the NHS, a more complacent attitude on the part of a Secretary of State as we head into winter? Yesterday the Secretary of State refused to trigger plan B. Can the Minister tell us what is the criterion for triggering it?

Newspapers report today that a plan C—no household mixing—is being considered: a lockdown by the back door. When the Business Secretary ruled out a lockdown yesterday, was that just another example of his making things up as he goes along in interviews? The Minister for Health, the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), said on the radio today that that plan was not

“something that is being actively considered.”

Members should note the qualifying adverb “actively”. We do not want a return to the dark days of lockdown; nor do we want to see regional lockdowns, or local lockdowns like those that we saw in Leicester, Bolton and Burnley. Can the Minister rule out such lockdowns?

Is the truth not that we are in this situation because the vaccination programme is now stalling? Ministers cannot blame the public when 2 million people have not even been invited for a booster jab, and on current trends we will not complete the booster programme until March 2022. There are currently just 165,000 jabs a day; will the Minister make a commitment to 500,000 a day, and ensure that the programme is completed by Christmas?

The Minister will know that the highest concentration of infections is among children, but only 17% of children have been vaccinated. This is a stuttering roll-out of the children’s vaccination programme—and does it not expose the folly of cutting the number of school nurses and health visitors who support these immunisation programmes in our communities?

Only 36% of over-65s have been vaccinated against flu. We hear stories of cancelled flu jabs at GPs’ surgeries, and of pharmacists saying that they do not have enough supplies. Why are supplies apparently running so low? With infections, meanwhile, running so high, Ministers need to stop vacillating and get vaccinating.

The wall of defence is crumbling. We know that we have to get ahead of this virus, because otherwise it gets ahead of us. How will the Minister fix this stalling vaccination programme?

Let me first thank the right hon. Gentleman for his co-operation throughout the pandemic. However, I am a bit disappointed with his tone today. What we are seeing is the Government carrying out the plans that have been laid before Parliament—the autumn and winter plans involving plan A and plan B—and as the Secretary of State rightly said yesterday, plan A is still what we are working to.

Our vaccines have created a wall of defence. It is incredible how many people have taken up the offer, not just for the first jab but for the second, and are now coming forward for their boosters. In fact, at the start of the week 5.4 million people were eligible for their booster jabs, and 4 million people had taken up that opportunity: 4 million arms had been jabbed.

The right hon. Gentleman talked about 12 to 15-year-olds. We are now able to offer more choice to parents wanting to take their children to vaccination centres. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will agree that it is important for the choice of where children get their jabs to be as wide as possible to ensure that everyone has that opportunity. It is also important to ensure that the 4.7 million people who have not yet taken up the offer of the first jab are encouraged to come forward, because, as the right hon. Gentleman said, the vaccines are our wall of defence.

The flu vaccine programme, too, is extremely important, and people are now being called forward for the flu jab that is helping to protect us throughout the winter months. My message is this: if you receive a call for a flu jab, do not wait to receive a call for your booster jab, and vice versa. Get whichever jab you are invited for first, and that will help to protect you, your family and the people around you.

Last week, the Health and Social Care Committee and the Science and Technology Committee published a report saying that the vaccine roll-out was one of the biggest and most impressive achievements in British public administration in our lifetime, and I want to pay tribute to the Government and to the vaccines Minister for what has been achieved. But in truth, at its peak in the spring, we were jabbing 400,000 people a day; now it is fewer than 200,000 people a day. If we look at our higher hospitalisations, cases and death rates compared with countries such as France and Germany, we can see that the heart of it is not actually things like mask wearing and covid passports; it is their higher vaccine immunity. So I want to ask the Minister two questions.

First, on the decision that people cannot have their booster jab until six months after their second job, how hard and fast should that rule be? Does it really matter, when it is only nine weeks until the Christmas holidays, if someone has their booster jab after only five months? Should we not look at having some flexibility on that decision, so that we can get more people in for their booster jabs more quickly? Secondly, at the risk of making the Minister blush, does she not need to be a Cabinet Minister? Is it not one of the issues that the previous vaccines Minister sat at the Cabinet table and that she does not? This is such an important thing for our national defence against the virus and our utter determination to avoid another lockdown. Do we not need a vaccines Minister sitting around the Cabinet table as we did before?

I thank my right hon. Friend for his questions. I would like to reassure him that I have regular meetings with the Prime Minister and that the Prime Minister takes the vaccine roll-out extremely seriously, as does the Secretary of State. Regarding the timescale for the eligibility for boosters, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has provided advice that there should be a minimum of six months after the second jab, but I would like to reassure the House that the immunity does not fall off a cliff edge. It has waned slightly but not sufficiently, so there is still time for people to come forward. Obviously, we are encouraging them to come forward as soon as they are eligible, but they still have a huge amount of immunity over and above those who have yet to get their first jab.

With infection levels worryingly at previous lockdown levels, with the Government being accused of having taken their foot off the brake by the British Medical Association, and with NHS leaders calling for the reintroduction of restrictions, the Secretary of State’s stance of not implementing plan B at this point does not look credible. It looks like a repeat of the previous mistakes of acting too late. If the Government will not now follow Scotland’s lead and bring in measures such as mask wearing to reduce infection, how much worse must things get before they implement a plan B?

Our vaccines programme has really created a wall of defence. We are in plan A, and there is still more that can be done as part of plan A. That is why I am calling on the 4.7 million people who have yet to come forward for their first jab and on others to have their booster jab as soon as they are eligible, as well as encouraging 12 to 15-year-olds to get their jab as soon as they have the opportunity.

May I associate myself strongly with the Speaker’s statement earlier? It really should not be difficult for Ministers to come to this House to make statements, rather than doing so at press conferences. I really do think that the Speaker’s words should be taken on board by those on the Treasury Bench. It is worth saying that the number of patients in hospital with covid is lower now than it was a month ago. That is worth saying because it puts things into some context. My question is this, though, following on from the Chairman of the Health Committee. At the press conference yesterday, the Secretary of State seemed to imply that there was some reluctance among the public to come forward for booster doses. The headline in all the papers this morning was that if people do not come forward for their booster dose, we will have restrictions back. I can see no evidence that the public are not coming forward for their booster dose when asked, so can the Minister set out clearly whether there is a problem with people coming forward when asked? If the slowness of the roll-out is actually to do with the way in which either the NHS or Ministers are administering it, leading to a problem later in the autumn, that would be on Ministers and not on the public.

My right hon. Friend is right to say that the number of hospitalisations is now lower than it was a few months ago. People do not need to wait to be contacted by their GP, community pharmacy or the NHS to come forward for their booster jab, so long as they are six months plus one week past their second jab. We are encouraging everybody to come forward, even if they have not formally been invited, by dialling 119 or going online.

I have been fortunate in the past few weeks to go to both France and Italy. Both countries have vaccination rates very similar to the UK’s—in fact Italy has a slightly higher rate now—but the difference is that a person cannot go on public transport or into a supermarket without wearing a face mask, and they cannot go into a bar, restaurant or leisure centre without showing a health passport. Infection rates in those countries are now around a tenth of the infection rate in this country. Does the Minister accept those public health measures have brought down those countries’ infection rates well below our level, or does she think there are other reasons why infection rates are so much higher in our country than in Italy and France?

We laid before the House our autumn and winter plan, which outlines the non-pharmaceutical interventions on which people can make their own decisions, because we believe people can make informed choices. As people see the levels rising, they will look at the guidance again and perhaps make the decision to wear a face covering in more venues.

Will the Minister ensure that an obsession with non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as mask wearing, does not obscure the central message that the way out of this is through the continuation of the UK’s excellent vaccination programme? Will she ensure that the wind is not taken out of the sails of that vaccination programme as we enter a perilous part of this cycle in the winter months? And will she ensure that the evidence that monoclonal antibodies and antivirals given to test-positive vulnerable people before hospitalisation reduces their mortality is rolled out into recommendations so that such people can receive interventions that stand every chance of reducing their mortality and ensuring their recovery, thus reducing the burden on the national health service?

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point that our vaccination programme is the best wall of defence we can have. That is why, once again, I have made the call for everybody to have their first jab, if they have not had it, and their booster jab when they are eligible, and for 12 to 15-year-olds to have their jab when they can. As he rightly says, and he has much knowledge of this subject, monoclonal antibodies and antivirals will make big inroads into protecting the most vulnerable and the immunosuppressed. We welcome the antivirals that were announced yesterday, and over the coming months we hope they will be recognised by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

If the vaccination programme is, as the Minister rightly says, our best defence against covid, why are the Government so complacent about improving vaccination rates? In Nottingham, despite the hard work of partners, less than half of under-30s have had both doses of the covid vaccine. What is she doing right now to ensure that places with lower take-ups succeed in getting more people vaccinated?

The hon. Lady raises the issue of the differential uptake in different age groups. This is why the Government and the NHS have been keen to reach out to different age groups through different mechanisms, such as using shopping centres, football stadiums and pop-up sites. That will be continuing as we move forward in the coming weeks and months.

When we are increasingly concerned about mental health, the mask the Minister was wearing only moments ago denies us the fellowship and reassurance of her friendly facial expression, but the material of which it is composed has gaps that are 5,000 times bigger than the virus, does it not?

Like my right hon. Friend, I look forward to the time when we do not need to wear face coverings, because I love to see everybody’s smiling faces. However, we need to make sure that we all get jabbed, so that we can get to that stage.