Covid-19 Update

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The right hon. Lady makes an important point. We want everyone to take up the offer of a vaccine, and she is right to point out the disparity in take-up in certain communities. The good news is that—I think partly as a response to Government action and especially because of the fantastic people I have come across in London working for Public Health England, who have worked with and reached out to communities to increase uptake—we saw a significant increase in uptake over the summer in the communities to which she referred. That work continues, and it remains a priority.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I welcome the booster programme for the vulnerable as set out by my right hon. Friend, but may I ask him about the vexed issue of parental consent? The NHS website states that it would rarely be appropriate or safe for a child to consent without parents’ involvement and that a parent’s consent must be sought before vaccination. Will he confirm whether the intention is to follow that advice? If not, on what legal basis has that decision been made? The Gillick competence and later case law was intended for a far narrower set of circumstances than a mass roll-out of treatment to otherwise healthy children. If he is to make that decision, there must be parental consent to ensure credibility in the system.

[Sajid Javid]

I reassure my right hon. Friend that, first, the legal basis that we are following for vaccinations, and for child vaccinations in particular, has been set out since the 1980s and applied by successive Governments for all child vaccinations. The covid-19 vaccine offer will work no differently from the processes currently deployed. That requires, in the first instance, parents to be asked for their consent.

I am told by the school-age immunisation service—the specialists in the school system who work on child vaccination—that there is no dispute between what a child and the parent decide in the vast majority of cases; it works normally. Where there is a difference of opinion between the parent and the child, the service will bring both parties together to try to reach consensus, and only in the rare situations where they cannot reach consensus is it determined through the Gillick competence whether the child in question is competent enough to make decisions regarding their own health. I am told that, in general, the older the child, the more likely there is to be a decision that they are competent enough, but I stress that this process has been followed for decades under successive Governments and we will not be changing it.