Covid

Nicola Sturgeon is considering extending vaccine passports to Scotland’s cinemas, theatres and pubs. ‘We are also considering whether an expansion of the scheme to cover more settings would be justified and prudent given the current state of the pandemic,’ the First Minister said yesterday: she’ll decide next Tuesday. As she mulls, what data will she have to go on? Her deputy, John Swinney, conceded earlier this month that the government doesn’t have much in the way of evidence: the data is ‘impossible to segment,’ he says. Yet he told The Spectator at an event this morning that he still believed vaccine passports had a ‘role to play’ — pointing to an increased uptake of the vaccine in under-thirties.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has recommended that Covid booster jabs be offered to people in their forties, after they became available to the over-fifties earlier this year. But, as recently as August, the World Health Organisation opposed booster jabs. It said in a statement:  ‘In the context of ongoing global vaccine supply constraints, administration of booster doses will exacerbate inequities by driving up demand and consuming scarce supply.

Are vaccine passports being used in other countries in an attempt to cut Covid infections – or to try and boost vaccine take up by curtailing the social lives of those who refuse? The latest change in policy in Austria would appear to confirm that for them, it’s the latter. From today, access to restaurants, bars and any event with more than 25 guests will be limited to people who can prove they have been fully vaccinated, that they have previously recovered from Covid or that they have had one jab and a negative PCR test. In four weeks’ time, only the double-jabbed and those who can show they have recovered from Covid will be allowed in. Austria, like many EU countries, has had a vaccine passport scheme for several months.

Jeremy Hunt asked an entirely reasonable question of the Prime Minister today in the Commons — and got an entirely unreasonable answer. Hunt raised an amendment he is tabling which would require Health Education England to produce regular forecasts for the numbers of doctors and nurses that the UK needs to train. This is quite a small thing to ask for, but Johnson's response was first to dodge his way around the question, and then to turn the issue into a party political attack on Labour. He said: My right hon. friend is absolutely right that we have to ensure that our NHS has the staff that it needs. That is why there are 50,000 more healthcare professionals in the NHS this year than there were last year –—12,000 more nurses.

Which departments will fare the worst from this week's Budget? It won't be the Department for Health and Social Care. Over the past few days, new funding announcements have appeared in the papers meaning the NHS will be handed another £5.9 billion. That's in addition to the £12 billion a year investment it will receive as a result of the health and social care levy. Meanwhile, Whitehall sources suggest that Michael Gove has had some luck in his push for more funds for the levelling up agenda. Where the mood music is less positive is education.

When Sajid Javid was interviewed at Tory party conference recently, he was asked if he’s going to start firing unvaccinated NHS staff, given that care workers are about to lose their jobs under ‘no jab, no job’ rules. He said he was considering it, which would be quite a move. The unjabbed may make up a small percentage of the NHS workforce of 1.6 million people. Today’s Sunday Times says that he has decided to press ahead by introducing legislation that will make vaccinations ‘a condition of employment’ for health workers. This would follow what Joe Biden has done in America — where all medical employees face vaccine mandates and companies with more than a hundred employees must enforce vaccinations or weekly testing.

In a move that as important as any in the recent Cabinet reshuffle, Emily Lawson is returning to run the Covid vaccination programme. Lawson headed up NHS England's vaccination team during the rollout, and after its success, she was moved to take charge of the new Number 10 delivery unit. The hope was that she would bring the rollout mindset to public services more broadly. The delivery unit, modelled on its Blair era predecessor, is meant to ensure that the government actually does what it says it is going to do. Such is its importance that Lawson addressed the first meeting of the newly reshuffled Cabinet. The fact that she is now going back to the rollout shows how worried ministers are about the booster programme.

The Speaker was annoyed again today when the government only offered the Commons a Covid update after the Health Secretary's press briefing yesterday. Labour hauled vaccines minister Maggie Throup to the chamber for an urgent question. Before she had a chance to answer, Lindsay Hoyle scolded her superiors. 'This is not acceptable and, as I have warned the government, in those circumstances, I will allow the House the earliest opportunity to hear from a minister: in this case by an urgent question,' he said.

Is the government considering activating its 'plan B' Covid plans? Not yet.  After the Business Secretary played down talk of new restrictions this morning, Sajid Javid used today’s press conference to confirm that he would not be implementing the back-up plan ‘at this point’. However, the Health Secretary suggested that further measures – namely vaccine passports, work-from-home orders and mask mandates – could not be ruled out if the data substantially worsens. The main message from the press conference: get vaccinated There was a marked change in tone from Javid since the days soon after his appointment as Health Secretary when he declared that there was 'no going back'.

My memory of Colin Powell feels personal, even though we were 6,000 miles apart at the time. I was in Baghdad, covering the invasion of Iraq for the BBC. Powell was giving the speech of his life at the UN Security Council, accompanied by Powerpoint, trying to convince the world that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. I had just come from a press conference with senior Iraqi officials, who denied there were any WMDs in the country. They were shifty, oleaginous, terrified of Saddam. It wasn’t hard to believe they were lying and that dignified, decent Colin Powell, was right. ‘If Powell says so,’ I thought, ‘it’s probably true.

History suggests that when the state expands in a crisis, it doesn’t go back to its pre-crisis level once the emergency is over. After the first world war, the Lloyd George government extended unemployment insurance to most of the workforce, fixed wages for farm workers and introduced rent controls. The second world war led to Attlee's nationalisations, along with the creation of the NHS and the modern welfare state. In the magazine this week I ask if Covid will lead to a permanently bigger state. There is another danger in all this intervention: can the country afford it? Last year, state spending exceeded 50 per cent of GDP for the first time since the end of the war.

The word malaise, a general feeling of uneasiness whose exact cause is difficult to identify, is creeping into discussions. It's a politically loaded word, following its use by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 to describe the country he could not figure out to how lead. Carter's specific use of the term focused on the energy crisis, when OPEC monkeyed with America's oil supply. But Carter saw that something much deeper was wrong. There wasn't just an oil shortage to manage, but a recession of hope, a crisis of confidence that someone would have to lead America out of. He perceived that we were tired, worn down, unable to come together in common purpose and fix something. It would be interesting to hear what Carter thinks about 2021, when things once again don't work well.