Boris Johnson’s government is planning to force care home workers to take coronavirus vaccines, a leak from the COVID-19 Operations Cabinet sub-committee has revealed.
While the government has consistently claimed that vaccines will be entirely voluntary — as is customary in the country — a policy paper reportedly backed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Health Secretary Matt Hancock has signalled a reversal of this policy.
Details of the Cabinet sub-committee paper entitled “Vaccination as a condition of deployment in adult social care and health settings”, reported on by The Telegraph, also reveal that frontline healthcare workers may be forced to take the jab.
“The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State [Mr Hancock] have discussed on several occasions the progress that is being made to vaccinate social care workers against COVID-19 and have agreed – in order to reach a position of much greater safety for care recipients – to put in place legislation to require vaccinations among the workforce,” the paper said.
On Tuesday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock confirmed the veracity of the reporting, admitting that the government is indeed considering forced inoculations for care home workers, though he did caution that no final decision has been made yet.
“It’s important because those who look after people in care homes have a duty of care towards them. And not every resident in an elderly care home can be vaccinated,” Hancock said.
The legal change would fly in the face of claims from the government that vaccines would remain voluntary, with the PM himself saying in December: “I strongly urge people to take up the vaccine but it is no part of our culture or our ambition in this country to make vaccines mandatory. That is not how we do things.”
The legislation would likely only be applicable in England, with the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland able to make their own decisions on the matter.
The move would likely see 1.5 million people in England’s care home sector being forced to take the vaccine.
There are questions as to the legality of such a move, however, with the policy paper itself admitting that forcing employees to take a vaccine would likely face legal challenges on human rights grounds.
In modern British history, there is no precedent for such a move, according to a senior associate in Capital Law’s employment and immigration team, David Sheppard, who said that the only comparable legislation dates back over a century when the 1853 Vaccination Act mandated that newborn babies receive a smallpox inoculation.
A senior government source said that “protecting the most vulnerable in our society from a deadly virus is obviously of critical importance” and therefore mandatory vaccines for care home workers should be on the table.
The general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Frances O’Grady, criticised the proposed vaccines move, writing on social media: “As well as damaging trust and employee relations, this may be discriminatory.”
She suggested that instead of mandatory vaccines, “employers should encourage their workers to get vaccinated and make it as easy as possible – e.g. by giving paid time off for appointments.”
Care homes have been particularly hard hit by the coronavirus in the United Kingdom, with 9,631 recorded COVID-19 deaths since the start of the year, according to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics. The National Health Service (NHS) sent thousands of people infected with the virus into care homes from hospitals in the early stages of the pandemic.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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