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Sajid Javid has told Sky News he is “concerned” that the UK could witness a bad flu season due to there being “a lot less immunity” around to the virus because of the COVID restrictions that were in place last winter.

The health secretary said the government is preparing to roll out “the biggest flu vaccination programme this country has ever seen” following concerns that many more elderly and vulnerable people could contract the virus than that did last year.

Mr Javid added that, for those over 50, “getting your flu jab is going to be as important as having your COVID jab“.

Booster jabs would work like the annual flu jab, which helps protect vulnerable people from getting the virus during the winter months
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In July, the Department for Health and Social Care announced it would roll out the biggest flu programme in the country’s history from September

Back in July, the government announced plans for more than 35 million people, including secondary school pupils, to be offered a free flu vaccine this winter.

Ministers said the flu vaccine, to be rolled out from September, would be available to:

• All children aged two and three on 31 August 2021

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• All children in primary and all children in school years 7 to 11 in secondary school

• Those aged six months to under 50 years in clinical risk groups

• Pregnant women

• Those aged 50 years and over

• Unpaid carers

• Close contacts of immunocompromised individuals

• Frontline health and adult social care staff

The plans stated that those aged two and three, primary school children and secondary school children up to Year 11 would be offered the nasal spray vaccine.

Unveiling the plans two months ago, the Department of Health and Social Care acknowledged that “it is possible there will be higher levels of flu this winter”.

Meanwhile, Dr Yvonne Doyle, medical director at Public Health England (PHE), has previously warned that the coming flu season is “highly unpredictable”.

“The flu vaccine is safe, effective and protects millions of people each year from what can be a devastating illness,” Dr Doyle said in July.

Cropped shot of an young businesswoman sitting alone in her office and coughing as she suffers from a cold
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Mr Javid told Sky News that, for those over 50, ‘getting your flu jab is going to be as important as having your COVID jab’

“Last winter, flu activity was extremely low, but this is no reason for complacency as it means less people have built up a defence against the virus. Combined with the likelihood that COVID-19 will still be circulating, this makes the coming flu season highly unpredictable.”

Speaking on Sky News’ Trevor Phillips on Sunday programme, Mr Javid said flu jab programme preparations were under way.

“Winter, autumn, it is not just COVID that likes that part of the year – it is other viruses too,” he said.

“You have just mentioned another really important thing that we have got to prepare for and that is flu.

“I have already mentioned the preparations for boosters and I think that is going to be an important part of our defence, but when it comes to flu, what we have been planning the past few weeks is the biggest flu vaccination programme this country has ever seen.

“Why am I concerned about that? Because last year we didn’t have much flu because of all the other controls that were in place. And that means there is a lot less immunity around to flu than normal.

“And we know in some years, in a bad flu year, just how terrible it can be.

Nicola Stugeon
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Nicola Sturgeon said the UK is going into ‘a difficult and challenging period’

“So, alongside our continuing COVID vaccine programme, we are going to have our biggest ever flu programme – and I would say to those people listening, certainly those who are over 50, getting your flu jab is going to be as important as having your COVID jab.”

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later told Sky News: “We are going into, as everybody across the UK is, a very challenging and difficult winter period – so it is really important that we keep a very close eye on what is happening.”

On Thursday, the health secretary said he was “confident” COVID-19 booster jabs will start being administered later this month after the UK’s medicines regulator said the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines are safe to use.

The move by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) would allow the government to begin a COVID-19 booster programme if it decides to proceed with one.

Mr Javid said the news is “very welcome” but he will wait for a final opinion from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) before giving the go-ahead.

However, he added: “I’m confident our booster programme will start later this month but I’m still waiting for final advice.”

The MHRA issued guidance saying Pfizer boosters can be given to anyone, regardless of which doses they have had previously, while AstraZeneca boosters should only be provided to those who previously had that jab.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said there is a 'shocking imbalance' in the global distribution of vaccines
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The WHO’s Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has told wealthier countries to refrain from offering booster shots until the end of the year

The JCVI is examining whether booster shots are necessary for the elderly and vulnerable, with planning under way for a potential rollout this month.

Committee members are expected to decide who should get a third jab in the next few days.

But the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has told wealthier countries to refrain from offering booster shots until the end of the year in order to prioritise first doses for people in poorer countries.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “appalled” by comments from pharmaceutical manufacturers who claim vaccine supplies are high enough to allow for both third jabs and vaccinations in other countries.

Last week, the government announced that around half a million people who have a severely weakened immune system will be offered a third COVID-19 jab.

This extra dose will be offered to anyone over 12 who was severely immunosuppressed at the time of their first or second dose, including those with leukaemia, advanced HIV, and recent organ transplants – but it comes separately from the plans for a booster programme, which would see a larger number of people offered a third COVID jab.

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I’ve followed the PM wherever he goes in his first year in office – here’s what I’ve observed

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I've followed the PM wherever he goes in his first year in office - here's what I've observed

July 5 2024, 1pm: I remember the moment so clearly.

Keir Starmer stepped out of his sleek black car, grasped the hand of his wife Vic, dressed in Labour red, and walked towards a jubilant crowd of Labour staffers, activists and MPs waving union jacks and cheering a Labour prime minister into Downing Street for the first time in 14 years.

Starmer and his wife took an age to get to the big black door, as they embraced those who had helped them win this election – their children hidden in the crowd to watch their dad walk into Number 10.

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Keir Starmer, not the easiest public speaker, came to the podium and told the millions watching this moment the “country has voted decisively for change, for national renewal”.

He spoke about the “weariness at the heart of the nation” and “the lack of trust” in our politicians as a “wound” that “can only be healed by actions not words”. He added: “This will take a while but the work of change begins immediately.”

A loveless landslide

That was a day in which this prime minister made history. His was a victory on a scale that comes around but one every few decades.

He won the largest majority in a quarter of a century and with it a massive opportunity to become one of the most consequential prime ministers of modern Britain – alongside the likes of Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair.

But within the win was a real challenge too.

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Starmer’s was a loveless landslide, won on a lower share of the vote than Blair in all of his three victories and 6 percentage points lower than the 40% Jeremy Corbyn secured in the 2017 general election.

It was the lowest vote share than any party forming a post-war majority government. Support for Labour was as shallow as it was wide.

In many ways then, it was a landslide built on shaky foundations: low public support, deep mistrust of politicians, unhappiness with the state of public services, squeezed living standards and public finances in a fragile state after the huge cost of the pandemic and persistent anaemic growth.

Put another way, the fundamentals of this Labour government, whatever Keir Starmer did, or didn’t do, were terrible. Blair came in on a new dawn. This Labour government, in many ways, inherited the scorched earth.

The one flash of anger I’ve seen

For the past year, I have followed Keir Starmer around wherever he goes. We have been to New York, Washington (twice), Germany (twice), Brazil, Samoa, Canada, Ukraine, the Netherlands and Brussels. I can’t even reel off the places we’ve been to around the UK – but suffice to say we’ve gone to all the nations and regions.

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Starmer pushed on scale of “landslide” election win

What I have witnessed in the past year is a prime minister who works relentlessly hard. When we flew for 27 hours non-stop to Samoa last autumn to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) summit, every time I looked up at the plane, I saw a solitary PM, his headlight shining on his hair, working away as the rest of us slept or watched films.

He also seems almost entirely unflappable. He rarely expresses emotion. The only time I have seen a flash of anger was when I questioned him about accepting freebies in a conversation that ended up involving his family, and when Elon Musk attacked Jess Phillips.

I have also witnessed him being buffeted by events in a way that he would not have foreseen. The arrival of Donald Trump into the White House has sucked the prime minister into a whirlwind of foreign crises that has distracted him from domestic events.

When he said over the weekend, as a way of explanation not an excuse, that he had been caught up in other matters and taken his eye off the ball when it came to the difficulties of welfare reform, much of Westminster scoffed, but I didn’t.

I had followed him around in the weeks leading up to that vote. We went from the G7 in Canada, to the Iran-Israel 12-day war, to the NATO summit in the Hague, as the prime minister dealt with, in turn, the grooming gangs inquiry decision, the US-UK trade deal, Donald Trump, de-escalation in the Middle East and a tricky G7 summit, the assisted dying vote, the Iran-Israel missile crisis.

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In September 2024, the PM defended taking £20k GCSE donation

He was taking so many phone calls on Sunday morning from Chequers, that he couldn’t get back to London for COBRA [national emergency meeting] because he couldn’t afford to not have a secure phone line for the hour-long drive back to Downing Street.

He travelled to NATO, launched the National Security Review and agreed to the defence alliance’s commitment to spend 5% of GDP on defence by 2035. So when he came back from the Hague into a full-blown welfare rebellion, I did have some sympathy for him – he simply hadn’t had the bandwidth to deal with the rebellion as it began to really gather steam.

Dealing with rebellion

Where I have less sympathy with the prime minister and his wider team is how they let it get to that point in the first place.

Keir Starmer wasn’t able to manage the latter stages of the rebellion, but the decisions made months earlier set it up in all its glory, while Downing Street’s refusal to heed the concerns of MPs gave it momentum to spiral into a full-blown crisis.

The whips gave warning after 120 MPs signed a letter complaining about the measures, the Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall had done the same, but Starmer and Reeves were, in the words of one minister, “absolutist”.

“They assumed people complaining about stuff do it because they are weak, rather than because they are strong,” said the minister, who added that following the climbdown, figures in Number 10 “just seemed completely without knowledge of the gravity of it”.

That he marks his first anniversary with the humiliation of having to abandon his flagship welfare reforms or face defeat in the Commons – something that should be unfathomable in the first year of power with a majority that size – is disappointing.

To have got it that wrong, that quickly with your parliamentary party, is a clear blow to his authority and is potentially more chronic. I am not sure yet how he recovers.

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Welfare vote ‘a blow to the prime minister’

Keir Starmer said he wanted to rule country first, party second, but finds himself pinned by a party refusing to accept his centrist approach. Now, ministers tell MPs that there will be a financial consequence of the government’s decision to delay tightening the rules on claiming disability benefits beyond the end of 2026.

A shattered Rachel Reeves now has to find the £5bn she’d hoped to save another way. She will defend her fiscal rules, which leaves her the invidious choice of tax rises or spending cuts. Sit back and watch for the growing chorus of MPs that will argue Starmer needs to raise more taxes and pivot to the left.

That borrowing costs of UK debt spiked on Wednesday amid speculation that the chancellor might resign or be sacked, is a stark reminder that Rachel Reeves, who might be unpopular with MPs, is the markets’ last line of defence against spending-hungry Labour MPs. The party might not like her fiscal rules, but the markets do.

What’s on the horizon for year two?

The past week has set the tone now for the prime minister’s second year in office. Those around him admit that the parliamentary party is going to be harder to govern. For all talk of hard choices, they have forced the PM to back down from what were cast as essential welfare cuts and will probably calculate that they can move him again if they apply enough pressure.

There is also the financial fall-out, with recent days setting the scene for what is now shaping up to be another definitive budget for a chancellor who now has to fill a multi-billion black hole in the public finances.

But I would argue that the prime minister has misjudged the tone as he marks that first year. Faced with a clear crisis and blow to his leadership, instead of tackling that head on the prime minister sought to ignore it and try to plough on, embarking on his long-planned launch of the 10-year NHS plan to mark his year in office, as if the chancellor’s tears and massive Labour rebellions over the past 48 hours were mere trifles.

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Why was the chancellor crying at PMQs?

It was inevitable that this NHS launch would be overshadowed by the self-inflicted shambles over welfare and the chancellor’s distress, given this was the first public appearance of both of them since it had all blown up.

But when I asked the prime minister to explain how it had gone so wrong on welfare and how he intended to rebuild your trust and authority in your party, he completely ignored my question. Instead, he launched into a long list of Labour’s achievements in his first year: 4 million extra NHS appointments; free school meals to half a million more children; more free childcare; the biggest upgrade in employment rights for a generation; and the US, EU and India free trade deals.

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Starmer defends reaction to Reeves crying in PMQs

I can understand the point he was making and his frustration that his achievements are being lost in the maelstrom of the political drama. But equally, this is politics, and he is the prime minister. This is his story to tell, and blowing up your welfare reform on the anniversary week of your government is not the way to do it.

Is Starmer failing to articulate his mission?

For Starmer himself, he will do what I have seen him do before when he’s been on the ropes, dig in, learn from the errors and try to come back stronger. I have heard him in recent days talk about how he has always been underestimated and then proved he can do it – he is approaching this first term with the same grit.

If you ask his team, they will tell you that the prime minister and this government is still suffering from the unending pessimism that has pervaded our national consciousness; the sense politics doesn’t work for working people and the government is not on their side.

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Starmer knows what he needs to do: restore the social contract, so if you work hard you should get on in life. The spending review and its massive capital investment, the industrial strategy and strategic defence review – three pieces of work dedicated to investment and job creation – are all geared to trying to rebuild the country and give people a brighter future.

But equally, government has been, admit insiders, harder than they thought as they grapple with multiple crises facing the country – be that public services, prisons, welfare.

It has also lacked direction. Sir Keir would do well to focus on following his Northern Star. I think he has one – to give working people a better life and ordinary people the chance to fulfil their potential.

But somehow, the prime minister is failing to articulate his mission, and he knows that. When I asked him at the G7 summit in Canada what his biggest mistake of the first year was, he told me: “We haven’t always told our story as well as we should.”

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Beth Rigby asks the PM to reflect on a year in office

I go back to the Keir Starmer of July 5 2024. He came in on a landslide, he promised to change the country, he spoke of the lack of trust and the need to prove to the public that the government could make their lives better through actions not words.

In this second year, he is betting that the legislation he has passed and strategies he has launched will drive that process of change, and in doing so, build back belief.

But it is equally true that his task has become harder these past few weeks. He has spilled so much blood over welfare for so little gain, his first task is to reset the operation to better manage the party and rebuild support.

But bigger than that, he needs to find a way to not just tell his government’s story but sell his government’s story. He has four years left.

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Did Keir Starmer screw up his own anniversary?

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Did Keir Starmer screw up his own anniversary?

👉 Click here to listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app 👈

Sir Keir Starmer wanted to be talking about what he sees as Labour’s achievements after 12 months in government and his 10-year plan for the NHS.

But, after another dramatic policy U-turn and the sight of his own chancellor crying at PMQs, when he kept his support for her slightly vague, Beth Rigby, Harriet Harman and Ruth Davidson discuss if his start in office has been shattered by this week.

They also wonder if the solution to make relations with his own MPs a bit easier would be to make better use of Angela Rayner.

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US Republicans declare ‘Crypto Week’ to mull 3 crypto bills

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US Republicans declare ‘Crypto Week’ to mull 3 crypto bills

US Republicans declare ‘Crypto Week’ to mull 3 crypto bills

US Republican leaders say the House will look to pass bills on stablecoins, crypto market structure and CBDCs in mid-July in what they’ve dubbed “Crypto Week.”

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