Latest updates: Tory resistance to plan to offer Covid jabs to 12- to 15-year-olds comes ahead of announcement over booster jabs for over-50s
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11.03am BST
In the Commons last night Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccine deployment minister, made a statement to MPs confirming that the government would go ahead with vaccinating 12 to 15-year-olds. Prof Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, held a press conference earlier to say that the chief medical officers were recommending this, and so Zahawi’s announcement did not come as a surprise.
But the response from Conservative MPs was striking because many of them made it clear that they were deeply unhappy with the proposal. The exchanges only started after 9pm, and so they have had much less coverage in today’s papers than they would have done if that had taken place earlier, but here are some of the highlights.
The pressure will grow on the child. There is no way of legislating for this greater good concept that says, “The school may be in trouble, and your class may be in deep difficulty, if you do not take the vaccine.” I simply say … this is a real problem for us. It will lead to disputes in families and real problems about children’s mental health in the opposite direction, as they are put under pressure. I wonder whether [Zahawi] and the government will think again about this.
I am deeply uncomfortable with this decision. I think that when the JCVI made a decision on the application of the vaccine on clinical grounds it was in the right place.
I find what [Zahawi] has announced this evening deeply troubling. I think it will pit parents against parents and parents against teachers, with a poor child stuck in the middle wondering what to do. There will be very little benefit to the child, and there is a lack of long-term data on the potential harm. However, what concerns me above all is that the Gillick doctrine of treating children without parental consent will become the norm for a range of medical procedures.
There is a great danger in politics that we sometimes make decisions while looking in the rear-view mirror rather than at what is truly the current picture. I have grave concerns about this policy and the fact that the chief medical officers have made their decision on the basis of the educational impact rather than the health of the children at clinical level. I disapprove of this decision incredibly strongly, and I wonder what we can we do to ensure that this kind of thing does not happen again, because I firmly believe that this is a very dark day for our country. Is it going to end with vaccinating five-year-olds when there is no clinical need? This is not about teachers or education. The virus is endemic now; there is not a pandemic any more. We have to get real, and I hope that the government will reconsider.
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.
10.38am BST
Sir Keir Starmer has just finished delivering his speech to the TUC conference. He was speaking at Congress House, the TUC HQ in London, before a small audience, but the conference is essentially online and most of the conference “attendees” would have been watching virtually.
It was a relatively routine speech in which Starmer restated some of Labour’s proposals on workers’ rights but stressed that the party would not be able to implement them until it won power.
When I think about a new deal for workers I think of my dad. He worked on the factory floor all his life. Going to work at 8 in the morning, home for tea at 5, back to work 6 till 10 o’clock at night, 5 days a week. He did that to provide for our family.
So the starting point is a job to raise a family on. That means a real living wage …