Covid-19: Vaccination of Children

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Tuesday 21st September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who made so many important points. I also appreciate and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) for leading on the debate; I know many people right across the country are grateful for it, because this is an area of immense concern as their children are being vaccinated or not, as the case may be.

The country has gone through a difficult time over a long period. Who would have thought in March last year that we would be in this position now, debating whether 12-year-olds would be vaccinated to deal with this disease? At the beginning, there was very little certainty or scientific understanding of what we were facing. The scientific understanding has carried on apace; there has been a huge global effort to increase it, and on the medical side there has been a huge advance in how we treat people.

Covid is far less dangerous now than it was at the beginning, and we need to be clear about that, including when we look at the Government’s statistics on how deaths and other concerns are presented. To this day, they still show the overall death rate as including those deaths in the first and second waves. That makes us believe that we have not rolled out an effective vaccines programme and that doctors and people in hospitals are not far more effective at treating the disease itself. We are in a far better position, and that must be more clearly understood.

Initially, in January this year and December last year, the vaccine roll-out was pitched as protecting the most vulnerable: those who are old and those who have particular health challenges. Then, before we knew it, the ages were coming down and down. We got to age 18, and at the same time it was not a single vaccination, but a double vaccination that would give people the necessary protection. Now we are in the position of giving a booster vaccination to people in the near future. Initially it is being proposed for the over-50s, but will that come down as well?

The point I am making is that we have not been given any certainty over what the Government and their advisers deem to be success. It seems as though, because the system has not been given clarity about what success is, it carries on and on and the next group, the next group and the next group receive the vaccination. However, we know that in the first and second waves the connection between transmission, hospitalisation and death was strong. We know from Government data that, in the third wave, the connection between transmission, hospitalisation and death is fundamentally broken; it is nothing compared with what it was at the beginning. Our approach to covid therefore ought to reflect those facts.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

I recall the pervasive disapproval that attached to my family when my children were at school and it became apparent that my wife was refusing to use the powerful chemical solution for the control of nits. When we come to schools being collectively vaccinated, the decision of some parents or children not to be vaccinated will undoubtedly be a matter of common knowledge—there is certainly the danger of that. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that it will be difficult to prevent that general disapproval and all that may flow from it from being attached to parents or children who have decided not to be vaccinated?

[Chris Green]

My right hon. Friend makes exactly the right point. In school settings, it will be incredibly difficult to do this, and it will be variable. It will depend on the culture of the school and the school leadership. Some schools will be open and objective, and will say, “We will respect you, the family, for the decisions you make on behalf of your family,” but I am pretty certain that other schools will have a very difficult and challenging atmosphere for those 12-year-old children and their families if they do not comply.

I think that is a very dangerous route for us to go down and will cause so much pressure. That leads on to an immensely important point. Traditionally in the United Kingdom, our approach to vaccinations has been one of non-compulsion. Our vaccination take-up across the board has been very high because people trust the vaccination programme and that these things, which we can take voluntarily, are there for our own good. We do not need coercion to take them; they are there for our good so we will take them. What repercussions will we face in years to come now that there is a toxification due to the imposition of these vaccines?

What, furthermore, do we see? We see that the first and second waves had a huge impact on us, but the third wave is far less impactful. All our vaccines are effective against all variants of concern. We see compulsory vaccination in the care sector, no doubt shortly to be rolled out into the national health service, and therefore after that to other sectors in society. We see the establishment of the idea of vaccine IDs and domestic ID cards. There is a pause at the moment in England, but those causes are being advanced in Scotland and Wales. In many ways, we can objectively say that we are almost through the worst of the pandemic, yet the more draconian or authoritarian measures are being introduced at this stage. It is perverse.