MP opposes plan to force NHS workers to have jab
BIRMINGHAM MP Shabana Mahmood is leading opposition to plans to force all NHS workers to get a Covid-19 vaccine.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid, the MP for Bromsgrove, said he is “leaning towards” making the jabs compulsory for staff in England.
NHS figures show that 13,270 NHS staff are not fully vaccinated in Birmingham, Solihull, Coventry and the Black Country. That includes 9,674 staff who have not had a single vaccination, while others have been vaccinated only once.
Up to 16% of staff at Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, almost one in six, have not had a single vaccination, and 15% of staff at Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust have not been vaccinated at all.
At University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation
Trust, which runs a number of major hospitals including the Queen Elizabeth, 14% of staff, around one in seven, have not been vaccinated at all.
But Labour opposes mandatory vaccination.
Ms Mahmood, MP for Ladywood, spoke out against the proposal in her role as Labour’s National Campaign Co-ordinator.
She said it would lead to staff shortages in the health service, and might actually make people more reluctant to take the vaccine.
Ms Mahmood said: “On NHS staff, same as care workers, we haven’t supported compulsory vaccination because the cohort of people that we’re talking about, who work in the NHS, who haven’t taken up the vaccination, is disproportionately at the lower paid end of NHS workers.
“We’re talking primarily about women, lower paid women and also some ethnic minority communities. And the profile of those people is the same as you’ll see across the rest of the population – there’s huge amounts of vaccine hesitancy.”
She said women who hoped to become pregnant were particularly reluctant to be vaccinated because they feared it would affect their fertility. The NHS says there is no evidence Covid-19 vaccines have any effect on chances of becoming pregnant.
Earlier this year, Paulette Hamilton, the Cabinet Member for Health and Social Care in Birmingham city council, wrote to Mr Javid warning that 2,690 Birmingham care home workers had not yet been double-jabbed, and preventing them from working could lead to “mass unavailability of care home beds”.
Jeremy Brown, professor of respiratory medicine at University College London Hospitals, who sits on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, said: “If you’re frontline NHS staff dealing with patients and meeting the general public you should be vaccinated – it’s a professional thing, it’s a safety thing.”