Covid-19 Vaccinations: 12 to 15-year-olds

We now come to the statement from the Secretary of State—sorry, he is not here. Instead, it is the Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment. It is a privilege to have you here, Minister.

I am grateful, Mr Speaker. With your permission, I would like to make a statement on our vaccination programme against covid-19.

We know that vaccinations are our best defence against the virus. Our jabs have already prevented over 112,000 deaths, more than 143,000 hospitalisations and over 24 million infections. They have built a vast wall of defence for the British people.

Earlier this year, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency approved the covid-19 vaccines supplied by Pfizer and Moderna for 12 to 17-year-olds. It confirmed that both vaccines are safe and effective for this age group. Following that decision, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation recommended vaccination for all 16 and 17-year-olds and for 12 to 15-year-olds with serious underlying health conditions. It next looked at whether we should extend our offer of vaccination to all 12 to 15-year-olds, which would have brought us into line with what is already happening in countries such as France, Spain, Italy, Israel and the United States of America. It concluded that there are health benefits of vaccinating this cohort, although they are finely balanced.

It was never in the JCVI’s remit to consider the wider impacts of vaccinations, such as the benefits for children in education or the mental health benefits that come from people knowing that they are protected from this deadly virus. It therefore advised that the Government may wish to seek further views on those wider impacts from the United Kingdom’s chief medical officers. The Secretary of State, together with the Health Ministers from the devolved nations, accepted that advice. Our CMOs consulted clinical experts and public health professionals from across the United Kingdom, such as the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. They have also benefited from having data from the United States of America, Canada and Israel, where vaccines have already been offered to children aged 12 to 15 years old.

I am grateful to the Minister for advance sight of his statement. On behalf of the Opposition, I welcome the guidance today from the chief medical officers and the response of the Government tonight.

Children may not have been the face of this crisis but they have been among its biggest victims. Children have lost months of in-person learning, and have spent weeks cut off from friends and family. We still do not fully understand the long-term mental health implications of this, especially in poorer areas where deprivation already has widespread consequences for the health and wellbeing of our children. Being in school is not just about learning; children often access health services through school as well. I therefore particularly welcome the CMOs’ recognition of the importance of avoiding the disruption of being out of school in making this decision. We are also pleased that the Government have now made the decision, given that other nations have been vaccinating children for some months.

But many of our constituents will rightly have questions. Will the Minister explain to the House what the next stage in the children’s vaccination programme will look like? By what date does he anticipate that children will be vaccinated? On the roll-out, he will know that, for TB, HPV and children’s flu vaccinations in primary schools, it is often school nurses, health visitors and specialist vaccination teams who go to schools directly and vaccinate. Will that model be used in this case, or will children instead be asked to go to the vaccine hubs run by primary care because it is the Pfizer vaccine? Will it be the responsibility of the parents to arrange their child’s vaccination, or will the local NHS arrange it with schools, year group by year group, or class by class? Will the flu vaccine that is to be expanded to secondary school children this year be delivered at the same time as the covid vaccine, or at a separate time?

The Minister rightly said that vaccinating children is a benefit to those children but will also reduce transmission, and in that respect it is a benefit to wider society, but children and young people, and society itself, will in turn benefit if we drive up vaccination rates among adults. In the most deprived areas, fewer than 70% of the adult population are vaccinated; in the least deprived areas it is more than 90%. Among 25 to 30-year-olds, 55% are on their second dose; among 30 to 35-year-olds, 68% are on their second dose; and among 35 to 39-year-olds, 75% are on their second dose. What will he do to drive up vaccination rates among adults, because that is key to pushing down overall infection rates?

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his support, for his points about guidance to the parents and of course to the children, and for his points about the long-term mental health consequences of this pandemic for school-age children.

I can confirm to the right hon. Gentleman that the NHS—it is incredibly efficient and well-equipped, because it has been running the school age vaccination programme for many, many years for other vaccines—will be the primary vaccination infrastructure that we will use to deliver this vaccine. If there are schools where that is unable to be delivered, we will use the rest of the covid vaccine infrastructure, including vaccination centres, to deliver that in a safe and appropriate way. My point is to reassure him and parents up and down the country that it will be the school age vaccination programme that has run in schools. Teachers and parents are well-versed in that process.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about vaccine uptake. He will recall that I said at this Dispatch Box on 13 February, in launching the vaccine uptake programme, that the NHS continued to put effort and resource into making vaccines available and easily accessible to the most deprived communities and to all ethnic groups. We will continue to redouble our efforts, including with the booster programme, which will come later this month. We have had the interim advice from the JCVI on boosting for flu and covid. The uptake of both should increase the uptake in those communities. We have spent a lot of time looking at that.

The right hon. Gentleman asked an important question about the consent process, and I want to spend a little time on that. As with all vaccinations for children, parental consent will be sought. The consent process will be handled by each school in its usual way and will provide sufficient time for parents to provide their consent. Children aged 12 to 15 will also be provided with information, usually in the form of a leaflet for their own use and to share and discuss with their parents prior to the date of immunisation and the scheduled time for it. Parental, guardian or carer consent will be sought by the school age immunisation providers prior to vaccination, in line with other school vaccination programmes.

This is an incredibly sensitive decision but, in an open society, the Government have done exactly the right thing, which is to be open. The narrow health benefits to children are marginal, but the broader health and social benefits are considerable. Most importantly, this is one of the last pieces of the jigsaw if we are going to be able to say we have done everything possible to stop another winter lockdown. However, the final piece of that jigsaw, learning from Israel, is to have booster jabs. Could the Minister tell the House when we will have a decision on boosters? Could he also confirm that we will have no problems with supply after the Valneva decision today and with flu jabs, if we are going to have this big expansion of jabbing later in the autumn?

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his important question. He is right to identify that this is a sensitive issue, which is why it was right for the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to take its time to look at the data from other countries on first doses and second doses and for the chief medical officers to then do the work unimpeded which they needed to do. It is right that we follow their advice tonight.

On the booster campaign, we have received the interim advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation—it was published on 30 June this year— on a potential booster programme, including flu and covid vaccine. I can reassure my right hon. Friend that the decision on Valneva will not impact our booster vaccination programme. We await the final advice. The JCVI has received the data from the COV-Boost study, where we looked at all the different vaccine brands—in some instances, full doses and half doses—as to which is the best vaccine to boost with.

I assure him that later this month we will begin a major booster programme. On flu—of course, the flu programme has already begun, and I assure him that we have the supplies for a major programme for both—we are looking at the really ambitious number of 35 million and, when we get the final advice from JCVI, the booster programme will be equally ambitious.

I, too, welcome the decision to vaccinate 12 to 15-year-olds. Scotland’s NHS is also primed to deliver vaccinations as quickly as possible, but it is a pity that there was a delay and that the opportunity to vaccinate during the summer holidays was missed. In Scotland, where our schools went back before English schools, we have seen a huge surge, and we are seeing the same rise in Northern Ireland and Wales. That may happen here as well. I wonder how much of the delay was down to the remit given to the JCVI, which seemed to focus on hospitalisation and death—quite rare, thankfully, among children—rather than considering the wider impacts of education and socialisation loss or of long covid, which we are seeing in young people and children. Was the delay about the remit? Was the JCVI given a narrow remit? Or was it about whether Pfizer and Moderna vaccines would be sufficient to allow the group to have been vaccinated in the summer?

There are rumours that there will be a U-turn tonight on yesterday’s U-turn on vaccine passports. I would be grateful for the Minister clarifying that. Whether that is the case or not, this chaos undermines public health messaging, creates confusion among the public and creates rejection of whatever decision finally comes.

The hon. Lady asked a number of questions that I will try to address in order. She asked about the JCVI’s remit, which was very much around what it is clinically qualified to address. That is why it advised that the CMOs needed to look at the wider impact on children specifically. There was no issue at all around shortage of vaccines, and I am confident that we have the vaccine supply that we need for both this recommendation, which we are accepting, and the booster campaign.

It was important that the JCVI took its time and looked at both first-dose and second-dose data on the rare signal around myocarditis and pericarditis. The United Kingdom has sometimes been an outlier to other nations, but on the whole we have got these decisions right because we rely on that expert clinical advice. I hope that gives reassurance to families up and down the country.

On vaccine passports, the Secretary of State for Health made it clear that we will not go ahead with vaccine certification for nightclubs or other venues. No one—certainly not on the Government side—would have moved forward with that happily. [Interruption.] If we are to have a grown-up debate, it is important for the whole House to remember that the virus is still with us and that we all want the same thing: to transition it from pandemic to endemic status so that we can have a sustainable return to normality as quickly as possible.

I have given many vaccines in my time, including hundreds of covid vaccines more recently, but I am not comfortable with vaccinating teenagers to prevent educational disruption. Under the current rules, no child needs to isolate if they are a contact. They do so only if they are a positive case and, for them, the maximum is eight days of schooling—and that is only if they catch coronavirus during term time. Half of children have already had it and are very unlikely to get it again. Does the Minister therefore really believe that vaccinating 3 million children to prevent an average of four days or less off school is reasonable?

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s important question, and I thank her for the work she has done and continues to do on the vaccination programme. All I would say to her is that I think it is important that the Government accept the final decision—the unanimous decision—of the four chief medical officers for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and offer the vaccine. Of course, parental consent will be sought, but it is only right that we offer the one-dose vaccine to 12 to 15-year-olds per the advice received today.

I thank the Minister for the statement. I have highlighted many times in this Chamber the low take-up among some communities, specifically our black and minority ethnic communities. They are the same communities that will be hesitant about their children coming forward. They will be the same communities, if the vaccines have to be administered in school, that will make sure their children do not go to school that day. So I want to know what additional support and information—in different languages and reaching out to those communities—there will be to properly inform them so that they can make the decision about whether or not their children are vaccinated.

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s question. Actually, on her final sentence about proper information, I think it is important not to stigmatise any parent whatsoever. It is right that we supply the information, and there will be an extensive information programme that the school-age vaccination team will deliver and work on with schools. The Minister for School Standards, who is sitting on my left, and his team, whom I have to commend, have been engaged throughout today in making sure that that information does get through to parents to make that decision.

Given the earlier decision of the JCVI, the low risk to children and the fact that children are not significant vectors of transmitting this awful disease, will my hon. Friend ensure that the chief medical officer makes it very clear to parents who may be concerned about vaccinating their children why this needs to happen and what difference it will make to their children? The Secretary of State for Education has said that parental consent would “always”—always—be asked before they receive the vaccine, and I just want the Minister to clear that up because understandably, and rightly in my view, parents will want to be able to consent. Finally, could I ask him how much this will cost financially?

I am grateful to the Chair of the Education Committee, who has rightly been incredibly engaged in the process and the debate around it. I confirm to him that parents will be asked for their consent, and information will be made available to enable them fully to understand the recommendation of the chief medical officers for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I will happily write to him about the cost of this part of the vaccination programme.

The Minister is right to say that the virus is still with us. This morning, there were 91 people hospitalised in my local hospital trust compared with 25 on 1 June, and vaccination for 16-year-olds and above—double vaccination—remains stubbornly stuck at 50% in my local authority area. Apart from this measure, what does the Minister have in mind to address these serious issues?

I am grateful for the hon. Member’s question. He raises an important issue, and he has raised it with me in the MPs briefings as well. One thing we continue to do is to have the evergreen offer so that people can come forward at any time. I can share with the House that in the past week, for example, in the first phase of groups 1 to 9—the most vulnerable as per the JCVI recommendation, as the House will recall—we still had 30,000 people come forward for their first dose, and out of the second phase of groups 10 to 12, we had 70,000. Therefore 100,000 people took advantage of the evergreen offer. As we embark—the planning is well under way—on the booster programme, we continue to drive up the evergreen offer for first-dose people to come forward.

The shadow Secretary of State mentioned his experience in his constituency and in his region about the drive to increase uptake among different ethnic groups. That continues to be our priority, and we continue to make sure that those communities get not just the information but access to the vaccines. We are making it as easy as possible for them to access the vaccine without an appointment: they can just walk in and get their jab.

I listened carefully to the Minister’s answer to the Chair of the Health and Social Committee, and perhaps I may press him a little. He said that the Government have received only interim advice from the JCVI about the adult booster campaign, but this morning outside the House the Prime Minister said that the booster campaign would be going ahead and had already been approved. Have the Government received the final advice from the JCVI about the adult booster campaign, which it said could be different from its initial advice? Have the Government made a decision about the details of the adult booster campaign and whether it is indeed going ahead?