Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will issue an official apology to social care workers that were dismissed during the pandemic for not being vaccinated.

Social care workers are employed by individual employers, and it is down to these employers to decide whether to hire or dismiss staff, not the Government. Making vaccination a condition of deployment (VCOD) was supported by the best available clinical evidence at the time. VCOD was kept under review, and the decision to revoke it was made after considering the latest public health evidence, which had changed significantly since VCOD was introduced.