London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Sep 18, 2025

Javid’s hard line on making NHS staff in England get jabbed may pay off

Javid’s hard line on making NHS staff in England get jabbed may pay off

Analysis: vaccination rates jumped in care homes after compulsion was introduced, suggesting the health secretary may be right
Forcing NHS staff in England by law to get vaccinated against Covid-19 if they want to keep their jobs is another example of the sometimes radical approach being taken by a health secretary who appears not to be scared of upsetting workers on the frontline with a notably muscular insistence on pushing through policies they oppose. GPs have already discovered this with Sajid Javid’s edict that they have to see in person any patient who wants a face-to-face appointment.

Ministers have been discussing the pros and cons of compulsory Covid jabs for health staff since the spring. The proposal has triggered everything from unease to alarm to outright condemnation among organisations representing NHS personnel. Many, though not all, have opposed it.

The Royal College of Nursing has “significant concerns”. The GMB has decried it as “an incredibly bad idea”. The British Medical Association has warned of the potential minefield of “legal, ethical and practical” issues involved. Hospital bosses and others have warned that the exodus of frontline workers the forced jabs could trigger would be “devastating for patient services”, especially given the health service is already short of 93,000 doctors, nurses and other staff – and especially if compulsion were to be introduced before winter, when the NHS comes under its most intense strain.

However, while controversial, the principle of compulsion is not new or unique to Britain. Other countries such as France, Italy and Greece are already telling health workers to get jabbed or risk losing their jobs, as are some hospitals in the US.

Why is Javid taking such a tough approach? People in organisations and staff groups that have discussed the proposal with the Department of Health do not sense that Javid is motivated by what they characterise as his hardman approach to the NHS, which has included threatening to sack bosses of hospitals that fail to cut the backlog of elective operations and “name and shame” GP practices that see too few patients face to face.

When in September he announced a public consultation on the plan, he stressed one guiding principle: patient safety – to “do what we can” to protect patients in hospital from getting infected with Covid by anyone treating them. “It’s so clear to see the impact vaccines have against respiratory viruses which can be fatal to the vulnerable,” he said.

The many thousands of patients who have died after succumbing to hospital-acquired Covid illustrate the risks involved in staff remaining unvaccinated. It was likely even in September that mandatory jabs would be brought in, and Javid himself said only last week that compulsion remained the “direction of travel”.

About 58% of hospital chiefs support compulsion, according to a recent survey of 172 NHS trust leaders by NHS Providers. However, it also found that 90% feared it could lead to staff quitting, thereby exacerbating widespread rota gaps.

If the health secretary has indeed listened carefully to the pleas from NHS Providers and the NHS Confederation, which also represents trusts, and as a result decided to delay implementation until April 2022, that would help the health service get through the winter and also give time for the policy to settle in, and potentially change the minds of NHS staff who have so far not got vaccinated.

When mandatory jabs for care home workers were unveiled in June, trade unions and other voices in the social care sector said it could prompt many staff to leave. Almost 13,000 have. But over the same five months the proportion of care home personnel who have been double-vaccinated has risen significantly, from 71.4% to 88.5%. So compulsion works – maybe.

In an opinion piece on Tuesday in the BMJ, Daniel Sokol, a barrister and expert in medical ethics, pointed out that in France “the new law on mandatory vaccination for healthcare workers led to a massive boost in vaccination rates, from 60% in July (when the new requirement was announced) to over 99% in October”.

Might the same big rise in take-up be seen among NHS staff? Javid, whose stance is backed by public opinion, seems to be gambling that it will, that the sceptics will be proved wrong and that patients will be safer as a result.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Macron and his wife to provide 'scientific photographic evidence' that she is a real woman
US Tech Giants Pledge Billions to UK AI Infrastructure Following Starmer's Call
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
DeepMind and OpenAI Achieve Gold at ‘Coding Olympics’ in AI Milestone
SEC Allows Public Companies to Block Investors from Class-Action Lawsuits
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Federal Reserve Cuts Rates by Quarter Point and Signals More to Come
Effective and Impressive Generation Z Protest: Images from the Riots in Nepal
European manufacturers against ban on polluting cars: "The industry may collapse"
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Trump: Cancel quarterly company reports and settle for reporting once every six months
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
US Launches New Pilot Program to Accelerate eVTOL Air Taxi Deployment
Christian Brueckner Released from German Prison after Serving Unrelated Sentence
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Hong Kong Industry Group Calls for HK$20 Billion Support Fund to Ease Property Market Stress
Joe Biden’s Post-Presidency Speaking Fees Face Weak Demand amid Corporate Reluctance
Charlie Kirk's murder will break the left's hateful cancel tactics
Kash Patel erupts at ‘buffoon’ Sen. Adam Schiff over Russiagate: ‘You are the biggest fraud’
Homeland Security says Emmy speech ‘fanning the flames of hatred’ after Einbinder’s ‘F— ICE’ remark
Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Assassin Tyler Robinson Faces Death Penalty as Charges Formally Announced
Actor, director, environmentalist Robert Redford dies at 89
The conservative right spreads westward: a huge achievement for 'Alternative for Germany' in local elections
JD Vance Says There Is “No Unity” with Those Who Celebrate Charlie Kirk’s Killing, and he is right!
Trump sues the 'New York Times' for an astronomical sum of 15 billion dollars
Florida Hospital Welcomes Its Largest-Ever Baby: Annan, Nearly Fourteen Pounds at Birth
U.S. and Britain Poised to Finalize Over $10 Billion in High-Tech, Nuclear and Defense Deals During Trump State Visit
China Finds Nvidia Violated Antitrust Laws in Mellanox Deal, Deepens Trade Tensions with US
US Air Force Begins Modifications on Qatar-Donated Jet Amid Plans to Use It as Air Force One
Pope Leo Warns of Societal Crisis Over Mega-CEO Pay, Citing Tesla’s Proposed Trillion-Dollar Package
Poland Green-Lights NATO Deployment in Response to Major Russian Drone Incursion
Elon Musk Retakes Lead as World’s Richest After Brief Ellison Surge
U.S. and China Agree on Framework to Shift TikTok to American Ownership
London Daily Podcast: London Massive Pro Democracy Rally, Musk Support, UK Economic Data and Premier League Results Mark Eventful Weekend
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Le Pen Tightens the Pressure on Macron as France Edges Toward Political Breakdown
Musk calls for new UK government at huge pro-democracy rally in London, but Britons have been brainwashed to obey instead of fighting for their human rights
Elon Musk responds to post calling for the murder of Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk: 'Either we fight back or they will kill us'
Czech Republic signs €1.34 billion contract for Leopard 2A8 main battle tanks with delivery from 2028
USA: Office Depot Employees Refused to Print Poster in Memory of Charlie Kirk – and Were Fired
Proposed U.S. Bill Would Allow Civil Suits Against Judges Who Release Repeat Violent Offenders
Penske Media Sues Google Over “AI Overviews,” Claiming It Uses Journalism Without Consent and Destroys Traffic
Indian Student Engineers Propose “Project REBIRTH” to Protect Aircraft from Crashes Using AI, Airbags and Smart Materials
French Debt Downgrade Piles Pressure on Macron’s New Prime Minister
US and UK Near Tech, Nuclear and Whisky Deals Ahead of Trump Trip
One in Three Europeans Now Uses TikTok, According to the Chinese Tech Giant
Could AI Nursing Robots Help Healthcare Staffing Shortages?
NATO Deploys ‘Eastern Sentry’ After Russian Drones Violate Polish Airspace
Anesthesiologist Left Operation Mid-Surgery to Have Sex with Nurse
×