COVID vaccine invites for 12 to 15-year-olds in England being sent out next week
The government has accepted the recommendation from the UK’s chief medical officers that children aged 12 to 15 should be offered a first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine and invitations will start being sent out next week.
Making the announcement in the Commons, Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi said: “We will now move with the same sense of urgency we’ve had at every point in our vaccination programme.”
Health Secretary Sajid Javid said: “I have accepted the recommendation from the Chief Medical Officers to expand vaccination to those aged 12 to 15 – protecting young people from catching COVID-19, reducing transmission in schools and keeping pupils in the classroom.
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Jabs for kids: ‘Benefits exceed risks’
“I am very grateful for the expert advice I have received from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and UK Chief Medical Officers.”
It comes after the chief medical officers said offering jabs to 12 to 15-year-olds would be a “useful tool” in reducing disruption to their education.
In their advice to the government, they said they were making the recommendation on “public health grounds” and it was “likely vaccination will help reduce transmission of COVID-19 in schools”.
The move means around three million children will now be eligible for the jab, which is expected to be administered through schools.
The consent of parents, guardians and carers will be sought prior to vaccination, but the Health Secretary told Sky News last week that children would get the “final say” over whether or not they get a jab.
Addressing this in his statement to MPs, Mr Zahawi said: “In the rare event that there is a situation a parent does not consent but the child or the teenager wants to have the vaccine, then there is a process by which the school age vaccination clinician will bring initially the parent and the child to see whether they can reach consensus and if not, if the child is deemed to be competent, then the vaccination will take place.”
The minister told the Commons that vaccines “are our best defence against this virus”.
“Our jabs have already prevented over 112,000 deaths, more than 143,000 hospitalisations and over 24 million infections,” he said.
“They have built a vast wall of defence for the British people.”
He added that there is a “comprehensive” surveillance strategy in place to monitor the safety of the COVID vaccines and continued: “It is important to remember that our teenagers have shown great public spirit at every point in this pandemic. They have stuck to the rules so that lives could be saved and people kept safe.
“They have been some of the most enthusiastic proponents of vaccines. This is at least in part because they have experienced the damage that comes with outbreaks of COVID-19.”
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Decision on vaccinating children ‘more difficult’
Labour’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said the party backed the government’s approach, but urged ministers to provide as much information to parents as they can.
He also posed a series of questions to the vaccines minister, including whether parental consent would be needed and whether the jabs would be administered through an existing NHS programme for other vaccines for children.
Mr Zahawi said in response that the NHS was “incredibly efficient and well equipped” in providing inoculations to children already and that an existing programme which visits schools would be used for the COVID jabs.
But Tory MP Dr Caroline Johnson said she was not “comfortable” with vaccinating teenagers to avoid “educational disruption”, while former party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith warned of the risk of “family disputes” over whether children should take up the offer of a jab.
Conservative MP and former minister Steve Baker urged the government to guarantee that “a child’s ability to receive an education equally with their peers will never be linked to their vaccination status”.
Mr Zahawi said in response: “That will not be used in any way. The whole purpose of this is to accept the clinical advice and protect children.”
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What do teenagers think of COVID vaccine?
The recommendation from the CMOs followed a decision from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation not to recommend mass vaccination of 12 to 15-year-olds on health grounds alone.
Explaining the rationale for their decision, the JCVI said the virus poses a very low risk to healthy children and inoculating them would only provide a marginal benefit.
But they did say that other issues, such as education, should be taken into account and considered by the CMOs in making their final decision.
Speaking earlier at a Downing Street news conference, the JCVI’s Professor Wei Shin Lim said there was “no conflict” between the stances of the JCVI and the CMOs, adding that the JCVI had looked at the question from a health perspective.
Mr Zahawi said further guidance would be sought from the JCVI before any decision is made on whether to offer second doses.
Speaking on the eve of Prime Minister Boris Johnson setting out his winter plan to manage COVID in the months to come, the vaccines minister told MPs that the government wanted to deliver an “ambitious” programme of booster jabs.
Politics
Boris Johnson pays tribute to polling station staff who refused to let him vote without photo ID
Boris Johnson has paid tribute to the villagers who Sky News revealed turned him away from a polling station when he tried to vote without a valid photo ID – under rules he introduced.
The former prime minister said he attempted to cast his ballot using a magazine sleeve with his name and address on as proof but was prevented from doing so.
The requirement to provide photo ID was introduced by Mr Johnson during his time in Downing Street as part of the Elections Act 2022.
The move was controversial over fears it would bar people from voting, particularly among disadvantaged groups.
Local election live: Khan likely to cling on to London – as West Midlands on knife-edge
Mr Johnson had been seeking to vote in South Oxfordshire, where a police and crime commissioner for Thames Valley was being elected.
Writing in his Daily Mail column, he said: “I want to pay a particular tribute to the three villagers who on Thursday rightly turned me away when I appeared in the polling station with nothing to prove my identity except the sleeve of my copy of Prospect magazine, on which my name and address had been printed.
“I showed it to them and they looked very dubious… within minutes I was back with my driving licence and voted Tory.”
Read more:
The winners and losers
Charts tell story of Conservative collapse
Analysis: Labour’s future success is less clear-cut
Thursday’s election is the first time many voters in England and Wales have had to present ID to vote under provisions first rolled out at last year’s local elections.
As well as driving licences, other acceptable forms of ID include passports, proof of age cards, blue badges, and some concessionary travel cards.
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The government has also said it intends to make veterans’ ID cards a valid form of voter identification after former service personnel were turned away.
Veterans’ minister Johnny Mercer apologised to those who had been unable to use the document to vote, vowing to “do all I can” to have it added to the list of valid identification.
Labour said the government has had years to ensure the card was included, having begun rolling out the scheme in 2019.
Politics
Labour has ‘searching’ to do after losing votes in areas with high Muslim population, Jess Phillips says
The Labour Party has some “searching” to do following its underperformance in areas with a high Muslim population, according to MP Jess Phillips.
Speaking to political editor Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, the Birmingham Yardley MP said her party will have to “wake up and face” the issues that lead to it losing seats to the Greens, independents and the Workers Party of Britain.
Ms Phillips said: “There are some issues with regards to independents and Greens that the Labour Party is going to have to wake up and face tomorrow morning, Monday morning, whenever it is.
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“There are some results in places, you know, Labour heartlands, where they maintain the council, of course, in places like Newcastle where the Greens are making strides.
“I very much expect, as the mayoral votes come in, that in places like Birmingham, Bradford, places with high Muslim populations, as we’ve seen overnight in Oldham, that the Labour Party will have some questions that they have, and some searching to do themselves.
“However, you cannot spin it any other way than this is a good night for the Labour Party.”
Analysis from Sky News shows that areas with a Muslim population below 5% saw the Labour Party’s vote share increase by 1.1 percentage points.
But areas with a Muslim population above 20% saw Sir Keir Starmer’s party lose 17.9 points from their vote share.
Local election results: Follow them as they come in here
One of the issues that is thought to be impacting the Muslim vote is Labour’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war.
Labour lost control of councils in Oldham and Kirklees, with victories for independent candidates opposed to the party’s stance on the war in Gaza.
It is hard to crystallise the exact impact on the elections, as a number of Labour councillors have defected from the party over Labour’s stance on the Middle East conflict.
George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain also targeted Labour seats on the issue of Gaza, and won four – including unseating the deputy leader of Manchester council Luthfur Rahman in Longsight.
The BBC reported that Labour were pessimistic about their chances in the race for the West Midlands mayoralty – which covers Ms Phillip’s constituency – with one journalist saying a Labour source told them: “It’s the Middle East, not West Midlands that will have won Street the Mayoralty. Once again Hamas are the real villains.”
This was decried by the Labour Party on the record, with shadow paymaster general Jonathan Ashworth saying: “This is utterly unacceptable. I’m pleased the Labour Party have quickly and rightly condemned it.
“This is a racist quote which has not come from anyone who is speaking on behalf of the party or whose values are welcome in the party.”
Yvette Cooper, Labour’s shadow home secretary, was asked on the Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge about whether the party’s stance will change.
She said the party does “recognise” the party’s stance on the conflict has been a “factor in some areas”.
Ms Cooper added there were areas where Gaza was “partly” a factor and there were also “council factors” as well.
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She added: “So it’s lots of different things.
“But undoubtedly many people feel really strongly about this – and rightly because tens of thousands of people have been killed, including the majority of them women and children.
“We desperately need an immediate ceasefire, but we have the hostages released. We need the urgent humanitarian action that’s needed.”
We went into this set of local and mayoral elections with two big questions: Is Labour on course for a majority and how bad is it going to be for Rishi Sunak?
On the Sunak question, it’s a very clear-cut story.
The Tories are having as bad a night as their worst nightmare.
There is a 19-point drop in the Conservative vote compared with the 2019 general election – one of its worst performances ever.
But it’s not an all-out win for Labour, either.
As it stands on these results, the party is not on course for an outright majority at the general election, according to our election expert Professor Michael Thrasher.
The projected National Equivalent Vote (NEV) share – the model we use to translate local council elections into a nationwide vote share – puts Labour on 35%, short of the 40%-plus territory some see as needed to catapult Sir Keir Starmer into No 10 and way off what Blair was hitting in the 1995 and 1996 local elections ahead of his massive landslide.
If you want to benchmark against how it compares to Blair’s performance in the run-up to 1997, in the 1995 local elections, Labour achieved an NEV of 47%, while in 1996 the party hit a NEV of 43%.
So what might that mean for the maths in the House of Commons?
The Tory majority is wiped out – with Sunak projected to win a 25% vote share – and Labour becomes the largest party in parliament, but 32 seats short of an outright majority.
That would give them a gain of 93 seats to 294, with the Tories dropping 130 seats to finish with 242.
The Lib Dems would add 30 seats to have 38 MPs, with others up seven on 66.
That raises questions for Labour.
While the country is clear in these results that the government is the problem, they seem less sold on whether Keir Starmer is the answer.
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Of the 260 seats lost by the Conservatives in the council elections as of 5pm on Friday, Labour has picked up less than half as the vote goes to independent and smaller parties.
Labour will argue two things: that they are winning in key battlegrounds across the country they need to win a general election, while voters are likely to turn out in bigger numbers and vote for the main parties when it comes to selecting MPs rather than councillors.
Labour insiders tell me it’s “wrong” to say they are not on course to win a general election.
“We are very happy with the efficiency of the vote from every corner of the country, from Hartlepool down to Thurrock, from Avon and Somerset up to Redditch, millions of people have sent out a message so loud and clear that even the prime minister in his private jet must have heard it,” said one senior figure.
“Labour’s on course to win a majority. We are very happy with where we are. Others and independents won’t get 24% in the general election.
“The voter distribution is where we need to be. In places like Tees Valley we have a huge swing.
“Where do you think all those smaller and independents are going at a general election where there is only a choice of two parties?
“A nine per cent lead is more than enough to win a majority and we are winning the seats we need to win a majority.”
Local election results: Relief for Sunak in key mayoral race
And there are some signs of direct transfer of seats from Tory to Labour in key constituencies.
Rushmoor, a council Blair never won and has been Conservative for 51 years, has switched.
Redditch, in West Midlands, was a straight swap to Labour.
In Swindon, another general election bellwether, Labour extended their lead.
“It’s not just the Tories losing, it’s us winning Rushmoor, Redditch. Whoever wins Redditch wins the country, Thurrock, Hartlepool,” the senior figure added.
“So we are winning in every type of seat, the Red Wall and the Blue Wall.
“Take Rushmoor. The position of a changed Labour Party is showing. Very satisfying that in a general election year, when the Tories are trying to use national security as a dividing line, they lose the home of the British Army.”
For the Tories, it’s a horror show – pure and simple. In Welwyn Hatfield, Portsmouth and Peterborough they are hitting their lowest seats ever, passing records set in 1996 when Blair was Labour leader and on the cusp of a landslide.
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Analysis: Local election results
But for all the good news for Labour, this is not a slam dunk by any means.
Because, in a nutshell, for all the seats the Tories are haemorrhaging, Labour is not by any means always their main beneficiary, as independents and smaller parties prosper from Conservative decline.
So take the nightmare of Peterborough for the Tories – Labour did well, but it was independents that picked up more seats.
Harlow is the same, with the party unable to unseat the Tories in a council they lost in 2021. The Conservatives lost 11 seats, but seven of those went independent rather than to Labour.
Labour is also struggling in some areas as tensions over the Israel-Hamas war are playing out at the ballot box.
Labour lost several seats to independents in Muslim majority wards, including in Blackburn with Darwen where the Labour vote share was down more than 20 points.
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In the Muslim area of Elswick in Newcastle, the Labour vote share plummeted and this time the Greens gained.
The Greens’ co-leader Carla Denyer told Sky News the win was predominantly because of Gaza.
The Greens are picking up seats from the Conservatives too.
The Lib Dems so far are underwhelming after a soaring performance last year, they could pick up when results from the South West and South East start coming in.
There are still plenty of results to go, but what is clear from the counts so far is that Sunak’s Tories are into John Major territory in these last big ballot box tests before the general election.
But what is less clear-cut is whether Sir Keir Starmer is riding the sort of New Labour wave that brought Blair crashing into Downing Street with a landslide in 1997.
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