Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the potential effect on retention of NHS staff as a result of the mandatory covid-19 vaccine programme for NHS staff.

The Department’s impact assessment estimated the number of workers who may remain unvaccinated against COVID-19 at the end of the 12-week grace period and are not medically exempt. For National Health Service staff, this is estimated to be 4.9% or 73,000. The Government continues to encourage unvaccinated staff to make the positive choice to be vaccinated.

The latest data of 13 January 2022 shows that since the Government consulted on the policy in September 2021, there has been a net increase of over 81,000 NHS trust healthcare workers receiving a first dose.