The government is consulting on whether to make COVID jabs compulsory for frontline NHS and health care workers.
The news comes as the deadline for care home workers to receive their first jab expires on Thursday the 16th of September.
The consultation process will take six-weeks to complete, and canvass views on whether compulsory vaccination arrangements should come into force for healthcare professionals who are in direct contact with patients.
The government has already decreed that workers who are employed in care homes regulated by the CQC (Care Quality Commission) must have been double-jabbed by November of this year. If the results of this consultation arrive at a similar conclusion, it will mean that only those who have been fully vaccinated will be allowed to deliver healthcare services.
In an interview on Sky TV’s “Trevor Philips on Sunday” programme, Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said that making jabs compulsory for NHS workers was ‘not necessary.’ Mr Taylor argued that, ‘The overwhelming majority of NHS staff are choosing to be vaccinated and the important thing is to support or give people the opportunity to be vaccinated, so I think we would want to say that there is no necessity for compulsion, for surveillance of people at this stage, because the staff themselves are doing the right thing.’
Figures released by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), show that around 92 percent of workers in NHS trusts have received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine.
The Workers Union on the Compulsory Jab Consultation
If COVID-19 has done nothing else, it has thinned the line between the distracting bustle of our every day lives, and the realisation that one day it must all come to an end. For the people in power, and the people at the sharp end of healthcare provision, the stark reality of this situation has been increasingly apparent. On the one hand, there’s the need to protect the sick and vulnerable and, balanced against that, the Enlightenment ideas of freedom that underpin the success of our country and others built on the same principles.
It is not easy to find a compromise. The government knows it must act to avoid accusations that it did not do enough to protect the people who need it most. At the same time, some healthcare workers want the freedom to opt out from getting the vaccine. Whenever and wherever decisions are made, someone will end up feeling aggrieved.
We believe that the best solutions are the ones that take people with them through force of argument. That’s why we’re encouraging everyone to look past one-size approaches and try to arrive at a place where solid arguments win the day over blustery rhetoric. This can only happen if a consistent message is repeatedly put out there that vaccination is the best way to protect people. At the same time, our healthcare organisations must not take this as a cue to sharpen their cleavers and cut the jobs of people who take another view. The industry is already suffering from chronic staff shortages. People can be redeployed or offered alternatives – anything else will lead us to a moral, ethical and practical quagmire.
The Workers Union – fighting for social justice, fighting for you
