Before we begin, I remind Members that they should wear a face covering when not speaking in the debate. That is what the House of Commons Commission would like Members to comply with. I also remind Members that they are asked by the House authorities to have a covid lateral flow test before coming on to the estate, and to give Members and staff space when they are seated and entering and leaving the Chamber. I call Martyn Day to move the motion.
That this House has considered e-petition 599841, relating to requirements for employees to be vaccinated against covid-19.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. This might be one of the more interesting debates to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic. It has implications for health and business, and there are serious ethical questions.
The concept of mandatory vaccination is not new. Historically, children were required to be vaccinated against smallpox in the mid-19th century by the Vaccination Act 1853, which made it compulsory. Now, following on from mandatory vaccination for care home staff in England by 11 November, frontline health and social care workers in England will need to be fully vaccinated by 1 April, which means that they will need to have their first jag by 3 February.
Several countries have taken harsh stances on requiring vaccinations, such as Italy, which is requiring all over-50s in the workforce to be vaccinated. Given these recent developments, this is not some theoretical or abstract debate; it has considerable real-world implications for us here and now.
The petition was started by Ryan Karter. It has already gathered more than 175,000 signatures, and it still has several months to run until it closes on 1 May. The Government responded on 25 November, and I will comment on the response in due course. I am grateful to the creator and all those who have signed it, as the scale and speed with which it is being signed is a clear measure of the public interest in the issue.
The petition states:
“Make it illegal for any employer to mandate vaccination for its employees.”
At its heart is support for the principle of informed consent. In speaking to Ryan prior to this debate, he made me aware of several reasons he had for starting it, not least of which was the concern that mandatory vaccination for frontline health and social care workers will lead to a loss of workers, increase the pressures of staff shortages, and be unfair and disrespectful to essential workers. That is a theme I will expand on later.
I am grateful to the hon. Member. Does he recognise that the requirement to have a hepatitis vaccination is only in the public heath green book? It is not mandatory in statute.
I thank the hon. Member for making that very good point. As I say, it is on a very different scale. It also takes no account of the fact that vaccines do not prevent viral transmission or infection.
The Government’s response puts the position in England out of step with the other UK nations. It is probably the most contentious part of today’s debate, and it is where I find myself very strongly in agreement with the petitioners. By contrast, the Scottish Government have pursued an “educate and encourage” strategy in their vaccine roll-out—a strategy that has resulted in a higher vaccine uptake to date. In Scotland, the covid vaccine is entirely voluntary, and the Scottish Government have no plans to change this position for healthcare staff or anyone else. The Scottish approach advises companies to bring staff along with them and to encourage vaccination rather than require it.
I mentioned earlier the deadline of 3 February for NHS workers in England to have their first vaccination in England in order to become fully vaccinated by 1 April. This is imminent, and I believe there is an impending staffing crisis.
The biggest issue facing the NHS has to be the backlog of operations and appointments. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that sacking 100,000 NHS workers can only make that worse—certainly not better?
The right hon. Member has read my mind. She makes a well-put point, which I was just about to come on to. I have a slightly different figure, but the principle is the same: it cannot help the situation.
In November, a Department of Health and Social Care impact assessment found that as many as 73,000 NHS staff in England could lose their job as a result. I do not think we will split hairs over a few thousand; we will not know the exact number until we find out how many people have had their first dose by 3 February. These Government policy job losses would come on top of the long-standing staff shortages experienced by the health service. Some estimates put the figure at 99,000 current vacancies in NHS England. If we do the maths using the figures I have just quoted, we could be looking at 172,000 vacancies in England come April. That position is not going to help the NHS provide care at this time of great pressure. It presents a very real threat—one which may put patients at risk and place further pressure on a significantly depleted workforce.
There are growing calls for this policy to be, at the very least, delayed. Pat Cullen, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, has said:
“We are calling on the Government to recognise this risk and delay a move which by its own calculations looks to backfire… To dismiss valued nursing staff during this crisis would be an act of self-sabotage.”
His reference to self-sabotage is very well put. Frances O’Grady, the TUC general secretary, has said:
“We are in the middle of an NHS staffing crisis, borne not only from covid absences, but also long-term problems that need long-term solutions. Now is not the right time to introduce more bureaucracy.”
TheBMJ has highlighted that recruitment agencies are concerned about the effect of the policy on their ability to place staff, as well as the additional bureaucratic burdens of processing documentation, which is likely to take around 45 minutes per locum. I hope that the UK Government will listen to those concerns and the petitioners, look at the example of the devolved nations and think again, before they do serious damage to workforce levels and capacity in the NHS.
I am not going to set a time limit. If Members stick to no more than six minutes, they will have ample time to get everything in and it will allow everyone to have a free-flowing debate.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this evening, Mr Paisley. The petition calls for it to be made illegal for any employer to mandate vaccination for its employees. It states:
“This should apply to all public sector (including the NHS, armed forces, care workers), third sector and all private sector.”
At the time of this debate, more than 218,000 people have signed the petition; of those, more than 44,000 have done so in the last four days, which shows what a live issue this is and how strongly people feel about it.
As we know, it is the Government’s intention to make covid-19 vaccination a requirement for all health and care workers in England from 1 April 2022. I would like to state at the outset that I believe it is incredibly important for people to get vaccinated against covid-19 to protect themselves and those around them. However, if people are hesitant or frightened, they should not be pressured into receiving the vaccine. The Government should be doing far more to tackle misinformation and promote the benefits of taking up the vaccine to NHS and care staff who are concerned about it. The Government should focus on driving up vaccination rates through persuasion, education and support.
Forcing the vaccine on people is coercive and will do nothing to build the trust that is needed. It is an issue of employment rights and—more than that—of human rights. It is about freedom of choice—a basic fundamental principle.
There is already a staffing crisis in the NHS. The latest figures show that there are more than 90,000 full-time equivalent vacancies in England’s NHS. The Government’s impact statement on making vaccination a condition of deployment in the health and wider social care sectors estimates that 88,000 NHS and independent health sector workers, and 35,000 workers in domiciliary care and other care services, will not have fulfilled the condition of deployment by the end of the grace period.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I put it on the record that I am massively pro-vaccine. It is the right thing to do, and it is the right way for us to move on from this pandemic and to protect ourselves. However, I agree with what the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) said in opening the debate about the importance of bodily autonomy and education, as opposed to forcing people to take the vaccine. I certainly do not think that businesses should be forcing existing staff, and I cannot imagine how seeking to do so would benefit their attractiveness as an employer or their viability as a business.
I want to focus my remarks on public services. As a county council leader, I am directly affected by this issue as someone who has to deliver social care services. Although staff made an incredible effort over Christmas to try to mitigate the massive staffing pressures that exist in the sector—my thanks go out to them all, because it was an incredible effort to do that and to protect those services and vulnerable people as far as possible—the impact has been huge.
As a county council, we have already gone, in just a few months, from having no waiting list for social care provision to having 400 on the waiting list. It is hugely important that we are not further hit by additional staffing issues. Care plans are regularly handed back to my director of adult social care at 4 o’clock on a Friday afternoon for the council to pick up, because care services cannot deliver them over the weekend. We are just about managing so far, but further issues, including mandatory vaccination, will continue to hit us.
We have lost some staff already, and we are set to lose more. Overnight, hospitals and NHS trusts put out figures on how many staff they are set to lose. My local hospital is set to lose around 200 staff from 3 February. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) said earlier, that can only be detrimental given the continuing backlogs and the challenges of existing of NHS pressures.
It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I thank the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) for introducing this debate and for making his case with such eloquence. I also draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
I begin by acknowledging the immense debt of gratitude that I and all my constituents owe to Dr Mantgani and his Birkenhead vaccination team. Throughout the pandemic, they have consistently outperformed all other teams in the north-west, and even today, from their base in the Birkenhead medical centre, they continue to work tirelessly to encourage the vaccine hesitant to come forward and have their first jab. The vaccine remains the most powerful weapon that we have in the long fight against covid, and I implore any of my constituents who have not yet had their first jab to get it as soon as possible, without fear of judgment or ridicule.
However, as the Government start speaking of a future beyond covid restrictions, we must confront the uncomfortable fact that many people in the country still refuse to get vaccinated. For those of us who have proudly had our boosters, their reasons may sometimes seem unfathomable. Some have fallen prey to the online conspiracy theories and scare stories that the tech giants have failed miserably to stamp out, some have legitimate health concerns or suffer from deep-seated phobias, and others distrust established authority, with varying levels of justification. All of them deserve to be treated with compassion—and so, as we ask ourselves whether employers should be allowed to make vaccination a condition of employment, my answer is a loud and resounding no.
The recent vote to introduce a vaccination mandate in the NHS highlights some of the issues that we face. To defy the party Whip is never an easy decision, but I voted against that motion, and resigned from the Front Bench in the process, because I could not in good conscience condemn so many of our healthcare heroes to the dole queue. Now, 80,000 healthcare heroes face the grim prospect of unemployment in the midst of a once-in-a-generation cost-of-living crisis.
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I am extremely grateful to the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day), who opened the debate, and to all the petitioners.
Like others who have spoken, I am hugely supportive of the vaccine—it works. Office for National Statistics data from November shows that, throughout 2021, the death rate was 28 times higher among the unvaccinated than among those who had been double-jabbed. It is utterly clear that the vaccine is our way out of this, and we should stand behind the evidence and encourage people to take it. But to compel people is utterly illiberal, utterly wrong and a challenge to our freedoms.
The petitioners rightly challenge us to consider how we treat our fellow citizens who are not yet vaccinated. Some are not vaccinated for good clinical reasons, and we know that they are covered, but others are hesitant—not resolutely opposed, but hesitant. Some are resolutely opposed, and a smaller number will be those who spread information that we would perhaps term “fake news”, which has a huge impact because it can lead to and feed the hesitancy of a much larger number. But for liberal, compassionate and practical reasons, we must agree with the petitioners and oppose compulsion.
Treating the unvaccinated members of our society as second-class citizens is utterly wrong. It is an attack on freedom and, as has just been mentioned, it is hardly going to win over hearts and minds. My challenge and ask of the Minister is: what are the Government going to do to step up their efforts to educate and inform, to tackle the common objections, and to answer them rigorously and regularly through challenge? Changing hearts and minds will take skill, patience and persuasion. I am certain that compulsion will do the opposite of what the Government think it will achieve.
Forcing people to be vaccinated who have chosen so far not to be will, understandably, turn hesitant people into hostile people. It will solidify resistance to the vaccine. It will give the small minority who wilfully spread misinformation the status of martyrs, making the whole exercise utterly counterproductive.
I thank all the petitioners, including 354 from my constituency of York Central, for enabling us to have this important and timely debate just days before legislation will mean that hundreds of thousands of NHS workers will lose their jobs. Before I begin, I must declare my interest as a former head of health at Unite and a senior clinician for 20 years, working in acute medicine.
The Government know that they have to withdraw the mandatory vaccination regulations. They have no choice. We are heading for such a serious NHS and social care crisis that no one will ever forget that the Tories broke the NHS and spun it into this unnecessary crisis, delaying operations and sacking vital NHS staff after all they have done to serve us, even at a time when they were very much forgotten. We are already around 100,000 staff down in the NHS. According to Government figures, another 88,000 people could be sacked if they are not vaccinated by 3 February. That is just days away. People are already having to hand in their notice. Many already have, which is putting pressure on our service.
If a Health Minister were present—I have to say that I am perplexed that one is not—they would know that the exodus of staff will not only seriously exacerbate the covid crisis but place incredible stress on the staff who have to remain, and therefore break them too. We already know about the very fragile mental health of the staff, who have been so traumatised by covid. As for social care, which is already unable to meet demand, the most vulnerable will be left without vital care. Delayed discharges will fill our hospitals, blocking the back door as well as the front door.
Just think: 115,000 staff who are in work today will be sacked—gone, no longer serving, in the dole queue. It is negligent and illiterate to not remove the regulations. I trust that Labour has also seen the light and understood the risk, and that it too will call for the immediate withdrawal of the regulations. Labour cannot be complicit in the sacking of hard-working health and care workers, or in bringing our NHS to its knees.
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Ryan also has concerns over vaccine safety, the evidence of their efficacy, and the failure of current policy to account for natural immunity to covid. The petition goes on:
“All British people should have the right to bodily autonomy and must never be coerced into receiving a medical intervention they may not want.”
That does not seem a particularly radical position to advocate, especially as the principle of consent is an important part of medical ethics and international human rights law. It is highlighted on the NHS website, which states:
“Consent to treatment means a person must give permission before they receive any type of medical treatment, test or examination.”
It adds:
“This must be done on the basis of an explanation by a clinician”,
and,
“Consent from a patient is needed regardless of the procedure”.
That is a position I find comforting and reassuring.
What do the UK Government say? In responding to the petition, the Government make a number of points. On the efficacy of vaccination, the response states:
“The vaccines are the best defence against Covid-19 and uptake of the Covid-19 vaccination has been very high across the UK. Vaccination reduces the likelihood of infection and therefore helps break chains of transmission.”
I assure the Minister that in that aspect he has my full support and agreement, and the weekly publishing of the covid-19 vaccine surveillance report evidences that fact. However, it should be noted that the reports state:
“Vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease with the Omicron variant is substantially lower than against the Delta variant, with rapid waning. However, protection against hospitalisation remains high, particularly after 3 doses.”
The Government’s response to the petition states:
“Government has identified limited high risk settings where there is strong public health rationale for making vaccination a condition of deployment. The Government has recently announced that health and social care services will need to ensure that workers who have direct face to face contact with service users have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, following consultation.”
It should be mentioned that within the NHS there is an existing, long-standing precedent requiring vaccination against hepatitis B for those undertaking exposure-prone procedures due to the potential health risk involved. Having said that, the expansion of this position to cover covid-19 is on a very different scale.
On requirements by other employers for staff to be vaccinated, the Government’s response states that
“an employer who proposes to introduce a requirement for staff to be vaccinated will need to consider the existing legal framework, including the law on employment, equalities and data protection. Whether or not it is justifiable to make COVID-19 vaccination a condition of deployment will depend on the particular context and circumstances.”
Some UK businesses have declared that all employees must be vaccinated or face a review of their contracts. The legality of that has been disputed by employment lawyers and trade unions, although, of course, it may be legal if it is written into contracts. For most of the UK, power over employment law is reserved to Westminster; only in Northern Ireland is it devolved. Decisions over companies’ requirements rest with those businesses.
On legal protections for workers, the Government response states:
“In addition to contractual and common law protections, there are relevant statutory frameworks, such as the Equality Act 2010, which provides protection against unlawful discrimination. The Employment Rights Act 1996 provides various general protections, including against unfair dismissal and unlawful deductions from wages. In addition, collecting, storing and using information about workers’ vaccination status will engage the law on data protection. Employers will need to ensure that they have acted in accordance with their legal obligations when making decisions on requiring a COVID-19 vaccination.”
That sounds like a potential minefield of complexity if ever there was one.
Last April, the Equality and Human Rights Commission said:
“Employers are right to want to protect their staff and their customers, particularly in contexts where people are at risk, such as care homes. However, requirements must be proportionate, non-discriminatory and make provision for those who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons.”
From an employment law and non-discrimination perspective, the safest route is to encourage vaccination, not to mandate it.
As I draw my remarks to a close, I note that there are so many points that could be made in this debate but limited time to make them. I have only scratched the surface while setting the scene, and I look forward to hearing what other right hon. and hon. Members have to say. I reiterate my main point that an “educate and encourage” strategy would be a better approach and that there is still time for the Government to change tack on mandatory covid vaccination for England’s NHS workers.
The warnings from the sector have been clear. The Royal College of General Practitioners has described compulsory vaccination for health professionals in England as
“not the right way forward,”
and it said over the weekend that there will be “massive consequences” for the NHS if unvaccinated staff are taken out of frontline roles by 1 April. I hope the Government are listening. The NHS Confederation has said that mandatory vaccination will reduce frontline NHS staff numbers even further and lead to more gaps in capacity, at a time of intense pressure and patient demand. I know what a serious issue that is, having spoken to members of the Royal College of Nursing about the pressure that they are under due to the lack of staffing.
The Government are making a major crisis even worse by making it mandatory for NHS staff to be vaccinated. A number of constituents who have written to me are dedicated NHS staff with many years of experience. One wrote of how she had worked throughout the pandemic, at times with inadequate personal protective equipment. Sometimes she worked 60 or 70-hour weeks, and she feels greatly aggrieved about how the Government are now treating her.
Nurses facing a choice between losing their job and having a vaccine that they are worried about taking have written to me about their sleepless nights and the huge stress that the situation is putting on them and their families. Some say that they are supportive of the vaccine but, for medical reasons, are fearful of having it; however, they find that they do not meet the exemption criteria. One constituent expressed her concern that the Government website states:
“The clinical decision on your medical exemption is final. You can’t appeal the decision.”
I would be grateful if the Minister could let me know whether the Government will revisit that on behalf of my constituent and others in her situation.
Ministers really should listen to the voices of the hundreds of thousands of people, including hundreds in my constituency of Wirral West, who have signed the petition that we are discussing. The Government should not be pursuing policies that could potentially put more than 120,000 health and care staff out of work, exacerbating the already desperate situation in which the NHS and the care sector find themselves. Nurses, care workers and doctors are highly dedicated professionals who are trained in infection control. Their sense of vocation and selflessness during the pandemic has been, and continues to be, inspirational. Will the Government change course, protect these professions and respect the human rights of working people?
I did not vote for mandatory NHS vaccines. In hindsight, I would not have voted for care sector vaccines, either, but unfortunately I cannot go back in time. The Government still have time to rethink, and that is my plea to the Minister. The wider debate about the importance of bodily autonomy and our rights and freedoms is hugely important, but it is also the case that, in this instance, the health argument does not stack up.
As we move out of the pandemic—touch wood—and beyond the period of most intense risk, I cannot see how it can be okay for these staff to have worked throughout the riskiest time of the pandemic, when transmission was at its highest, only for us to sack them now, as it falls away and the risk recedes. We know—the evidence suggests it—that omicron is less impacted by the vaccine. We have argued, when it comes to vaccine certification, which I also did not vote for, that it is okay to have a daily test and that that mitigates the risk of not being vaccinated, but we are not making that case for NHS or care staff. I do not see how we can argue both positions at the same time.
As we have touched on, there are 73,000 or 80,000 staff to go across the NHS and big numbers across the care sector. That can only make things worse when we have backlogs and waiting lists in both sectors. I do not know how getting rid of 80,000 staff across the NHS chimes with our commitment as a Government to 50,000 more nurses or doctors, or whatever it was. It is nonsensical.
I totally understand people’s wish to choose a vaccinated carer over an unvaccinated carer, but truth be told, that is not the choice; it is an unvaccinated carer or no carer. If it were my elderly relative being looked after, I would certainly prefer them to have somebody rather than nobody. Listening to Radio 5 this morning, I heard a GP making the same argument about a colleague in his practice who had been there for many years and had managed to work throughout the pandemic quite successfully, as far as access to GPs goes—that is another matter that we could debate for hours—but who now faces no longer being able to see patients over the next few weeks. How is that better than having an unvaccinated GP?
There is still time for the Government to reconsider. I really think we need to delay the 3 February deadline, hopefully with a view to reconsidering this measure altogether in due course. I recognise that there are probably significant legal implications of reconsidering the decision for the care sector, with people already having lost their jobs in that sector, but still, this is not a good plan and it will not help us to deliver these services. I call on the Government to reconsider. The evidence does not make a strong enough case, from a health point of view, to override those freedoms, to override bodily autonomy or to exacerbate the staffing issues that already exist, so I call on the Government to think very hard over the next week or two about whether this is something they really want to do. I certainly do not think it is.
Experts were quick to make their objections known. The Trades Union Congress warns that without a delay to its implementation, the vaccine mandate could compound an already acute staffing shortage and lead to a “staffing nightmare”. The Department of Health and Social Care’s own equality impact assessment makes it clear that black, Asian and minority ethnic workers, young workers and women are likely to be disproportionately affected. Meanwhile, the Government seem to have run roughshod over the concerns of the trade unions in their haste to drive through the policy.
NHS staff need only look to the care sector to see the consequences of enforcing such a mandate. Following the introduction of a “no jab, no job” policy in care homes last summer, many dedicated workers have been forced out of the profession they loved. Unison is warning of a “catastrophic” staffing crisis in a sector that was already in desperate need of no fewer than 100,000 additional staff.
Of course, service users have every right to feel safe in their hospitals and care homes. Every effort must be made to protect them and to convince those who care for them of the need to get a jab. But we must never forget that it was only two years ago that these very same health and care workers were asked to enter clinical settings that the Government had so utterly failed to make safe. Nor should we ignore the far more fundamental role that shortages of PPE, tests and staff continue to play in jeopardising patient safety. We should never stop holding the Government to account for their monumental failure to engage with the alternative and effective safety measures that have been set out by the trade unions.
It is not just clinical settings that have been affected. In the last few weeks alone, a score of major retailers, including IKEA, Next and Ocado, have announced that unvaccinated workers will be forced to survive on the pittance that is statutory sick pay should they be forced to self-isolate. What a shame. It is not safety that has motivated this decision; it is profit, pure and simple.
I urge the Minister to consider the implications of the Government’s actions. I fear that this draconian and punitive strategy will do nothing but harden the minds and strengthen the convictions of the vaccine hesitant. The only way to win minds and get jabs in arms is through compassion, engagement and understanding. That will do far more than vaccine mandates ever will in bringing us closer to winning the long war on covid.
As has been mentioned, compulsion will have a particular and appalling impact on our health service at every level. We reckon that in my local hospital trust, which has three hospitals in the Morecambe bay area and more further north in the rest of Cumbria, at least 94% of NHS staff are already vaccinated, and that figure is growing by the day. To explode that by introducing compulsion is wrong on so many levels.
This might be a high estimate, but staff in the trust estimate that up to 800 staff across those three hospitals and in other parts of the NHS in our community could lose their jobs. If they are not vaccinated in a week and a half’s time, they will be on a trajectory to be out of a job by 1 April. That is an insult to those people, who have served us, kept us well, saved people’s lives and put themselves and their families in harm’s way over these two appalling years. Ministers clapped them, and now they will sack them. That is utterly wrong and ungrateful, above all else. As we have said, 3 February is just a few days away, so a U-turn now is urgent. This will cause colossal damage in our health service in a matter of days and weeks.
In our communities in south Cumbria and north Lancashire, at times, more than 50% of people diagnosed with cancer are waiting more than two months to get their first treatment. We know that for every four weeks that someone waits for cancer treatment, there is, on average, a 10% decrease in their likelihood of surviving that cancer. Thanks to figures provided by Macmillan, we know that through the pandemic, 740,000 cancer screenings were missed, and 60,000 diagnoses were missed. There are 60,000 people out there with cancer who do not know it, or who were not diagnosed until probably far too late.
That is a snapshot of the kind of pressure that our health service is under just when it comes to cancer, yet we are just weeks away from the Government potentially cutting the workforce by at least 5% in one go. That is unconscionable and wrong. Of course people must get vaccinated—I will plead with people to get vaccinated—but to compel them is an insult, an assault on liberty and counterproductive to the effort to increase vaccination. It will hugely undermine our national health service just at the moment when we need it the most.
I want to make it clear that I want everyone to participate in the vaccine programme. Covid remains a killer disease. To date, 1.3 million have been left with debilitating symptoms of long covid. The public inquiry has never been more needed, with devastating mortality and infection rates—and excess deaths on top—in our country. We must get on top of that. More than 1,000 people are continuing to die each week. The Government’s inconsistency in their application of the public health measures is at the root of many of those deaths. It is a complete scandal.
However, it is also a complete scandal to sack our NHS and care staff. The foresight of scientists to embark on the development of the vaccine, with taxpayers’ money, and that being rolled out through the NHS, has saved so many lives. As the professional bodies in the NHS—such as the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal College of Nursing—say, the regulations must be withdrawn. As all of the NHS and social care trade unions say, the regulations must be withdrawn. I have talked to NHS and social care staff, and they are resolute that they will not be bullied into a vaccine. They have very real concerns, and they are resolute.
The NHS constitution, and the whole health system, is dependent on informed consent. The vaccine does not remove the risk of transmission or sickness. Government statistics sent to me by the Health Minister, the hon. Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup), state that vaccine efficacy depletion against omicron is reduced to between 40% to 50% in 10 weeks. It helps for now, but there is no long-term plan. By April, efficacy will be below 50%, which means that the risk of transmission remains unless other measures are taken. The Health Minister knows that we cannot keep vaccinating every eight to 10 weeks, but she has not produced a plan for what we will do next. Higher-grade PPE will help, and regular testing will of course make us safer, but what is the plan?
The Government recklessly removing all restrictions, as covid continues to rip through our communities, is placing lives at risk. At the same time, they will put more pressure on the NHS because people will be sacked. That is illiterate, inconsistent and dangerous.
Staff are intelligent; they have analysed the data and come to their own decisions. It is through support that they will make their final decisions. That is why that supportive conversation—with a health professional with the right competencies, rather than a manager—is essential. I trust that the Minister will move on that point too.
There have been 431,482 reports of vaccine side effects on the yellow card system, up to 5 January, so of course health professionals are analysing that data—that is what health professionals do. There is no longitudinal study about the impact on long-term fertility—why not? That is the reason why many women are not getting vaccinated. Many staff have had covid and have antibodies. Why did they get covid? It is because the Government failed to provide PPE in those early days. Remember that? The Government were not sacked, yet today they will sack NHS staff. Well, I say no.
It is time to climb down, withdraw the regulations and respect our exhausted, stressed and traumatised NHS and care staff. It is time to work with them, not against them. It is time to say sorry for putting them under such pressure through these regulations. It is time to withdraw.