Labour pushes for prioritisation of key workers in vaccine roll-out

After criticising Keir Starmer during Prime Minister’s Questions by telling MPs that the Labour leader “won’t even say this morning that schools are safe”, Boris Johnson gave his own statement telling people the earliest schools can safely reopen is March 8th. As Starmer pointed out: “Even for this Prime Minister, it’s quite something to open schools one day, close them the next, to call them vectors of transmission and then to challenge me to say that schools he’s closed are safe.” Parents are now looking at five more weeks of homeschooling as a minimum and TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady has declared it “simply not sustainable” for people to continue working as normal while looking after their kids around the clock. She urged the government to “wake up to the huge stress working parents are under” and called on ministers to give all parents a temporary right to furlough with at least ten days’ paid parental leave each year.

The Labour leader demanded in PMQs that key workers be prioritised in the vaccine roll-out and pushed up to the first phase of the programme. Starmer stressed in particular the need to get school staff vaccinated early and told the Prime Minister to “use the window of the February half-term” to do so. Critics have argued that prioritising these workers would result in other, more vulnerable people not receiving the jab as quickly. But NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens told a joint Commons committee earlier this week that there is a “legitimate discussion” to be had on “whether or not there are certain other groups who should at that point also receive priority”. Deputy leader Angela Rayner was out defending the policy this morning, arguing that AstraZeneca has said it can deliver more vaccines and therefore “the government needs to really ramp it up”. And there is overwhelming support for the idea among the general public; polling by Savanta ComRes shows that 70% of people back the plan.

Shadow Business and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is celebrating a win this morning after the government axed its controversial plans to review workers’ rights in the wake of leaving the Brexit transition period. The proposals included ending the 48-hour working week, “tweaking” rights to rest breaks at work, not including overtime pay in holiday pay entitlement calculations and scrapping the need for businesses to log detailed daily reporting of working hours. Labour used its last opposition day debate to pass a motion demanding ministers rule out such changes to employment protections. And Tory minister Kwasi Kwarteng told Peston last night: “The review is no longer happening… We’re not interested in watering down worker’s rights.” Labour must remain vigilant, however. This will by no means be the end of Tory plans to downgrade workers’ rights now the transition period is over – and let’s not forget the fight to improve them.