My Lords, here we are, rather surreally, at a debate about regulations that were passed so many weeks ago that we are debating them as they are being abolished. It makes a mockery of the idea of scrutiny before we start. Since I have been in the House, I have not liked the idea of nodding things through—what has felt like rubber-stamping so many important decisions.
As I listened to the announcement of the abolition of plan B in the other place, I reflected that it sometimes feels as though our freedoms are treated as gifts from those on high, to be withdrawn from the public far too easily on the precautionary principle—we are being told even now to be cautious—and then given back to the public as though an act of generosity. None the less, I do not want to be churlish, and the announcement that plan B is consigned to the dustbin of history is great news. Hurrah. Perhaps, then, this discussion is just us going through the motions, and we should be celebrating—with wine and cheese—the end of an awful policy.
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I particularly did not like the demand for people to show their vaccine certificates and reveal their private medical information to access or engage in public life. However, there is no room for complacency. I ask the Minister if the vaccine passes—which he says were not vaccine passes—might have set up a dangerous template, still in existence, in which equal treatment for all citizens is jeopardised by access, particularly to certain jobs, being contingent on medical status. That has not changed with the abolition of plan B. Is this not a coercive and discriminatory new normal that divides society into the vaccinated and unvaccinated?
Look at the way that employers such as Morrisons and IKEA are depriving unvaccinated staff of sick leave. They are taking a lead from a government policy that gives the vaccinated privileged access to jobs. I am referring to the Government’s continued retention of VCOD1 and VCOD2—the demand that care workers and NHS staff have to be vaccinated to keep their
jobs. In the other place earlier today, MPs across parties noted that getting rid of plan B is incomplete, in spirit at least, when at least 70,000 NHS staff could be sacked from 1 April. As we speak, NHS trusts in England are preparing to send out dismissal letters from 3 February. I agree with Royal College of Nursing CEO, Patricia Marquis, and would like to know whether the Minister does, that the Government need to instigate a major rethink here:
“Mandation is not the answer and sacking valued nursing staff during a workforce crisis is reckless”—
“reckless” is a very strong word.
Despite that, the Prime Minister’s response was to mutter about following the evidence. We know from the evidence that while having vaccines and boosters may be invaluable to protect individuals from serious illness—I am a great supporter of that—the evidence on lessening transmissibility is just not there. Can the Minister comment on the latest ONS estimates on vaccination and reinfection status that showed that there is no significant reduction in the likelihood of testing positive after two vaccinations? Has he any views on the leaked memo from his own department that makes clear that there are those in the department who are saying, privately at least, that this anti-worker mandate is irrational and disproportionate?
Beyond pragmatism about unnecessarily losing vital health and social care staff in the face of weak evidence, the constant official line that such policies are necessary to protect vulnerable patients and care home residents fuels a climate in which the unvaccinated are accused of being selfish and dangerous. That is a dangerous, divisive message when you think that it is aimed at care workers, who have worked their guts out for months looking after the elderly but have decided, for whatever personal reason, that they do not want a vaccination and have now been dumped. It sets up a terrible template for society, dividing citizens into safe and unsafe categories, with the unvaccinated demonised as unclean, disease carriers and so on. This divisive and misanthropic message can only undermine social cohesion. That narrative comes from the very regulation we are discussing of vaccine accreditation and could cause us real problems in the future.
I say good riddance to vaccine passports. I am loath to pat the Government on the back too much for rescinding the policy, because I think it should never have been brought into law, but I want to credit grass-roots campaigners, such as the tireless Together coalition, which has kept up extra-parliamentary pressure. The worst thing about that—which should have been an inspiring example of civil society—is that, for their trouble, those campaigners have been dubbed anti-vaxxers. That term is now too often promiscuously thrown about to close down debate on vaccine-related policies and to discredit individuals and campaigns, rather than engage in open-ended arguments.
It is good that plan B has gone, but there is still a lot of animosity and tension in society around vaccines. Of course, we all know that there is a small fringe group with nihilistic views who are preoccupied with conspiratorial theories about Bill Gates and big pharma. I think that society can live with that small group
existing, but I worry about the positive case for the vaccine—which I consider to be a fantastic medical intervention and a great tribute to human ingenuity—being jeopardised if we lose all nuance and lump all views together.
I was shocked when the Opposition, arguing for a ban on people gathering outside schools to protest against vaccines to be part of the police and crime Bill, labelled such people as anti-vaxxers. I know parents who have organised some of those events; they were concerned about young children being pressurised into having vaccines, even though they were vaccinated themselves. They also quoted the JCVI; how can we call its members anti-vaxxers? I worry that young people who are healthy and full of antibodies, who may have had Covid or had one vaccine or two, but who do not want the booster, for whatever reason, are called anti-vaxxers. I worry about pregnant women who are nervous about the vaccine being called anti-vaxxers. I worry about the disproportionate number of ethnic minorities who, for all sorts of reasons, seem reluctant to have the vaccine being lumped in with anti- vaxxers. Those supporting the NHS100K campaign, which comprises health workers, doctors, nurses, midwives and anaesthetists across the board, all of whom oppose the mandating of vaccines, have been labelled anti-vaxxers. It should be noted that many are fully vaccinated but believe in the medical ethics of bodily autonomy and choice.
Will the Minister go back to the department and say that, while the vaccine certification regulations that we are discussing are being abolished, the differential treatment of the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, as institutionalised in the regulations, with the unvaccinated treated as lesser citizens, is very dangerous? I shall not celebrate freedom being restored until that has been abolished as well.