Medical unions hail ‘long overdue’ U-turn over jabs for NHS staff

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Sajid Javid today confirmed the intention to drop the controversial Covid vaccine mandate for NHS and care staff.

The Health Secretary said he believes the requirement is ‘no longer proportionate’ as he confirmed the widely rumoured move in the Commons tonight.

But the ‘no jab, no job policy’ will only be ditched pending a consultation, meaning thousands of unvaccinated carers will still be banned from taking up old jobs for now.  

It is unclear how it will affect the 80,000 unvaccinated NHS staff, who would need to get their first jab by February 3 in order to meet the April 1 deadline.

Mr Javid said: ‘While vaccination remains our very best line of defence against Covid, I believe it is no longer proportionate to require vaccination as a condition of deployment through statute.’ 

Mr Javid said the U-turn was motivated by protection against Covid among the public — both through vaccination and infection — coupled with Omicron being ‘intrinsically less severe’ meant the policy should come to an end. 

But he said the vaccine mandate was the ‘right policy at the time, supported by clinical evidence and the Government makes no apology for it’. 

Earlier today, the Royal College of Nursing hailed the rumoured move to scrap the policy as ‘just in time’, with the jobs of around one in 20 frontline NHS employees hanging in the balance. 

But care bosses said the U-turn was a ‘slap in the face’ to tens of thousands of care home staff who lost their job over a similar vaccine mandate which came into force last November. 

Speaking in the House of Commons this evening, Mr Javid said the ‘no jab, no job’ policy could be lifted because of increased protection against Covid among the public, coupled with Omicron being less severe than Delta.

He said: ‘In weighing up the risks and opportunities of this policy once again there are two new factors. 

‘The first is that our population as a whole is now better protected against hospitalisation from Covid.’

One in 15 people had Covid during the latest peak, according to the Office for National Statistics, and around a quarter of people in England have tested positive at least one, Mr Javid said. 

And 84 per cent of people over-12 are double-jabbed, while 64 per cent have been boosted, including over 90 per cent of over-50s, he said.

Mr Javid said: ‘The second factor is that the dominant variant Omicron is intrinsically less severe. 

‘When taken together with the first factor, that we now have greater population protection, the evidence shows that the risk of presentation to emergency care or hospital admission with Omicron is approximately half of that for Delta. 

‘Given these dramatic changes, it is not only right but responsible to revisit the balance of risks and opportunities that guided our original decision last year.’

He said the Government will revoke the vaccine requirement for health and social care workers depending on the outcome of a consultation.

However, Mr Javid noted that ‘rules must remain proportionate and balanced’ and if there is ‘another dramatic change in the virus, it would be responsible to review this policy again’.  

The RCN, Royal College of GPs and the Royal College of Midwives previously called on the Government to extend the deadline to prevent a mass exodus in the NHS.

But asked whether she would support scrapping the compulsory vaccination policy entirely, Ms Marquis said the RCN ‘absolutely would’.

She told BBC Radio 4: ‘We’ve been calling for it for some time now saying that mandating these vaccines is not the way to go about getting people to have the vaccination.

‘So, we absolutely would support the scrapping of the regulations.’

She said dumping mandate would come ‘just in time to stop the mass exodus [of staff] that we would have seen had the policy gone forward’.

‘The most important issue for us right now is the fact that there are so many nursing vacancies already,’ Ms Marquis added.

‘It makes no sense to risk losing thousands of registered nurses and health care support workers from both health, and also what’s been lost from social care, which actually puts patients at more risk than not having nurses at all.’

The NHS currently has around 100,000 vacancies, including 40,000 nurse and 9,000 doctor positions remaining unfilled.

This is equivalent to about seven per cent of the workforce, and will only get worse should all employees be required to get vaccinated.

Reports are already emerging of NHS staff leaving the health service in England, and signing up again in Scotland and Wales where jabs are not compulsory.

Ms Marquis warned that, without action, most unvaccinated staff will face the prospect of being given redundancy notices this week.

She said: ‘The vaccination is the right policy but forcing vaccination wasn’t, not in the middle of a staffing crisis particularly.’

She added that scrapping the mandate will mean ‘many, many nurses who were set to lose their jobs over the next few months will be able to stay in their jobs and continue to deliver patient care as safely as possible, given the lack of staff we already have’.

Ms Marquis urged all NHS staff to get vaccinated because Covid is still a ‘serious disease’, but said they did not support making the jabs compulsory. 

‘We would say that Covid is still a serious disease and would absolutely urge all nursing staff to get vaccinated,’ she said.

‘But the situation has changed in that Omicron is serious for those who are unvaccinated but actually overall as a country things have improved.’

Scrapping the Covid vaccine mandate for the NHS will only rub salt in the wound for the care sector, where all staff had to be inoculated from November.

Care bosses railed against the move at the time, saying they were already in the middle of a staffing crisis — also with more than 100,000 vacancies — and that it would put vulnerable residents at risk.

But their calls fell on deaf ears among ministers, who instead unveiled a similar policy for the NHS.

Around 40,000 employees in the sector have already lost their jobs because they were not vaccinated, it is estimated.

If the policy is reversed it is not clear how many would return, with some already thought to have taken up jobs in Scotland and Wales where jabs are not compulsory.

Ms Ahmed said she was ‘saddened for all the people who may have needlessly’ lost their jobs after being told the compulsory jabs policy could now be lifted.

She told BBC Breakfast that the impact on the sector had been ‘devastating’ and left social care ‘on its knees’.

‘The people who we’ve lost, we hope they’ll think about coming back and we will do everything we can to try and encourage them to come back.

‘But they will have found other roles and they may be happier in their other roles now and not want to move again.’

She added, however, that they were ‘really happy’ to hear that the policy could be scrapped before it comes into force in the NHS.

The director of the National Association of Care and Support Workers, Mark Topps, said it was ‘disgraceful’ that care homes had been forced to spend time and money on disciplinary proceedings and redundancies potentially for no reason.

He said: ‘We have lost people with years of experience and skills that we won’t ever get back and it is highly unlikely these staff members will want to come back into the social care sector after the way they have been treated by Government.’

The chair of the Independent Care Group which represents homes in Yorkshire, Mike Padgham, said the potential U-turn illustrated the ‘huge gap’ between how the NHS and the care sector are treated. 

He said: ‘We were robbed of thousands of staff back in November when the policy came in for care and nursing home workers and nobody lifted a finger.

‘But when a similar threat is levelled toward NHS staff, the policy is reversed.

‘It is another in a long history of slaps in the face for social care, which, given the services it provides, should have the same respect as NHS care.’

The Prime Minister appeared to confirm reports that the NHS vaccine mandate could be dropped today.

On a visit to a factory at Port of Tilbury, Essex, he said it was ‘absolutely clear’ that everyone should get the vaccine.

But added that the Health Secretary would likely make an announcement later today on the mandate.

The chief secretary to the Treasury Simon Clarke also did not rule out the U-turn during a round of media interviews this morning.

Asked about the move on BBC Breakfast, he said: ‘Again, that would be for the Health Secretary to determine — I wouldn’t pre-empt any announcement that he might make.

‘Obviously, again, as with the frontline NHS, the decision was taken that people who are working with the oldest people, some of the most vulnerable in our society, should be vaccinated.

‘There were good reasons for that — there are good reasons why you would want people who are dealing with very vulnerable people to have got protection for both themselves and those they are looking after.

‘Whether the shift to Omicron from Delta allows a change of policy in that space is something which, as I say, would be for health ministers to lead on.’

MPs gave the green-light to mandatory Covid vaccines for NHS staff in December, after voting through the move.

But since then reams of evidence has emerged suggesting Omicron is far milder than older variants. 

A senior government source told the Telegraph that ministers are U-turning on the mandatory jabs policy because Omicron is much less dangerous.

‘Omicron has changed things,’ the source said. ‘When we first introduced the policy, it was delta that was the dominant variant. That was very high risk in terms of how severe it was.

‘For omicron, while it is more transmissible, all the studies have shown it is less severe. That has changed the conversation about whether mandatory jabs are still proportionate.’ 

Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said: ‘There were always two risks to manage here: the risk of Covid cross-infection in healthcare settings and the consequences of losing staff if significant numbers choose not to be vaccinated.’ 

Prior to the reported U-turn, NHS managers had been advised they could move unvaccinated medics from the frontline into roles which do not involve direct patient contact. 

Bosses wouldn’t have to help staff find ‘suitable alternative employment’ and redundancy payments would not be made to those who are dismissed. 

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) health watchdog has said it will not take action against hospitals which decide it is safer to keep unvaccinated staff in place.

Last week Mr Javid said the policy was ‘under review’ and he did not want to lose a single worker to the mandate.

He hinted it may be scrapped because Omicron was less severe than Delta, meaning unjabbed workers posed less of a threat to patients.

Meanwhile, NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard told a board meeting on Thursday that the compulsory jabs policy posed ‘a real element of risk’ to services.

She said that aiming for universal uptake was ‘of course the right’ objective, but added: ‘At the same time, there is a real element of risk in this that local teams are facing and there’s a risk for our national level targets including the expansion of the workforce, particularly in nursing.’