Covid UK: Sajid Javid set to scrap vaccine mandate for NHS staff after 40k sacked from care homes

Care bosses have reacted with fury to No10 plans to ditch the vaccine mandate for NHS staff, two months after the ‘no jab, no job’ policy forced thousands to leave the sector. 

A two-jab vaccine mandate was supposed to come into force in England on April 1, which would have given the remaining 80,000 unvaccinated frontline NHS staff until Thursday to get their first dose. 

But Health Secretary Sajid Javid is poised to confirm the controversial move is being scrapped later this afternoon. 

Care bosses argue the U-turn shows social care was used as a ‘trial run for the NHS’, after a similar vaccine mandate pushed an estimated 40,000 carers out of the sector in November. 

It is unclear if the vaccine requirement would also be scrapped for carers, but bosses warned they have lost ‘people with years of experience and skills that we won’t ever get back’. 

Kari Gerstheimer, chief executive of charity Access Social Care, said: ‘If mandatory vaccinations are removed for the NHS, it is essential that they are also removed for social care.’

Other care leaders said the reported policy reversal for medics ‘illustrates the huge gap between NHS care and social care and the way they are treated’.

Another said it is ‘disgraceful’ that care homes have spent resources on disciplinary proceedings and redundancies potentially for no reason.

A senior NHS source told the HSJ that a ‘full and complete U-turn’ on the NHS vaccine mandate is expected — but whether the move is being scrapped altogether, delayed, or still applies to the social care sector has not been revealed. 

If the ‘no jab, no job’ policy was implemented, those without jabs would have faced dismissal warnings from Friday and been asked to work out their notice periods until March 31. 

Scrapping the Covid vaccine mandate for the NHS will only rub salt in the wound for the care sector, where all staff had to be inoculated from November.

Care bosses railed against the move at the time, saying they were already in the middle of a staffing crisis — also with more than 100,000 vacancies — and that it would put vulnerable residents at risk.

They warned mandating jabs could kill vulnerable residents because homes would be left with ‘unsafe’ staffing levels. 

But their calls fell on deaf ears among ministers, who instead unveiled a similar policy for the NHS.

Nadra Ahmed, chairwoman of the National Care Association, said she is pleased for healthcare staff, but ‘frustrated’ and ‘saddened for the care home staff who had lost their jobs needlessly’ owing to the introduction of mandatory vaccination.

She told BBC Breakfast: ‘I think we’re really happy for our NHS colleagues if this is what’s going to happen because it’s an unnecessary burden, and persuasion will bring us to the same outcome.

‘The people who we’ve lost, we hope they’ll think about coming back and we will do everything we can to try and encourage them to come back, but they will have found other roles and they may be happier in their other roles now and not want to move again.’

Mike Padgham, chairman of the Independent Care Group, said care homes need to know whether staff who lost their jobs because they were not vaccinated can have them back.

He said: ‘I think this illustrates the huge gap between NHS care and social care and the way they are treated.

‘We were robbed of thousands of staff back in November when the policy came in for care and nursing home workers and nobody lifted a finger.

‘But when a similar threat is levelled toward NHS staff, the policy is reversed.’

Mark Topps, a director at the National Association of Care & Support Workers (Nacas), welcomed the reports but said it is ‘disgraceful’ that care homes have had to spend time and money on disciplinary proceedings and redundancies potentially for no reason.

He said: ‘We have lost people with years of experience and skills that we won’t ever get back and it is highly unlikely these staff members will want to come back into the social care sector after the way they have been treated by Government.’

A senior Government source told The Telegraph that the U-turn in the NHS was made possible because of Omicron — which is much milder than older variants and makes two jabs significantly weaker at stopping transmission. 

The NHS currently has around 100,000 vacancies, including 40,000 nurse and 9,000 doctor positions remaining unfilled.

This is equivalent to about seven per cent of the workforce, and will only get worse should all employees be required to get vaccinated.

Reports are already emerging of NHS staff leaving the health service in England, and signing up again in Scotland and Wales where jabs are not compulsory.

The RCN, Royal College of GPs and the Royal College of Midwives previously called on the Government to extend the deadline to prevent a mass exodus in the NHS.

Asked whether she would support scrapping the compulsory vaccination policy entirely, RCN director Patricia Marquis said the union ‘absolutely would’.

She told BBC Radio 4: ‘We’ve been calling for it for some time now saying that mandating these vaccines is not the way to go about getting people to have the vaccination.

‘So, we absolutely would support the scrapping of the regulations.’

She said dumping mandate would come ‘just in time to stop the mass exodus [of staff] that we would have seen had the policy gone forward’.

‘The most important issue for us right now is the fact that there are so many nursing vacancies already,’ Ms Marquis added.

‘It makes no sense to risk losing thousands of registered nurses and health care support workers from both health, and also what’s been lost from social care, which actually puts patients at more risk than not having nurses at all.’