Javid says making jabs compulsory for social care staff has led to ‘surge’ in uptake – politics live

Councils should be allowed to use exclusion orders to stop anti-vaccine activists from protesting outside schools, Sir Keir Starmer has said. My colleague Sarah Marsh has the story here.

Good morning. Sajid Javid, the health secretary, has been on airwaves duty this morning, primarily to promote the announcement that almost GBP6bn extra is being spent tackling waiting lists in England. My colleague Andrew Gregory has the story here.

Javid was also asked about the government decision that comes into force on 11 November requiring all frontline social care staff to be fully vaccinate, and the consultation on requiring all frontline NHS staff to be fully jabbed too.

Javid said the final decision for NHS staff has not yet been taken, but he confirmed that his “direction of travel” was towards making full vaccination a mandatory requirement.

There have been claims that this policy will make staffing shortages – which are already a problem in the NHS, and particularly dire in the social care sector – even worse because a minority of employees will leave rather than agreeing to get fully vaccinated.

But Javid argued that these fears were unfounded, because in social care the new rule had led to an “absolute surge” in people getting vaccinated. He said:

At the time the government announced in June the decision to make vaccination compulsory for social care workers in England, around 15% of staff in care homes had not received a single dose of vaccine and around 30% were not fully vaccinated.

I will post more from Javid’s interviews shortly.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: The ONS publishes figures relating to vaccinations and long Covid.

12.30pm: Downing Street holds its lobby briefing.

2.30pm: Michael Gove takes questions in the Commons for the first time in his new role as levelling up secretary.

2.30pm: Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, gives evidence to the joint parliamentary committee considering the draft online safety bill.

3.30pm: Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, gives evidene to the European scrutiny committee.

I’ll be covering some UK Covid developments here, but for wider coronavirus coverage, do read our global live blog.

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