Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of enabling (a) hospital specialists and (b) GPs to exercise discretion in the classification of people with pre-existing categories as vulnerable people in relation to covid-19 support.

The Chief Medical Officer has led a thorough clinical review process to identify six categories of underlying clinical conditions which place someone at very high risk of severe illness if they contract COVID-19. General practitioners and hospital clinicians have the discretion to add individual patients to the list of those classified as clinically extremely vulnerable based on careful, clinical assessments of each individual’s needs. This requires expert clinical judgement on a patient-by-patient basis.