In Focus: Lords question mandatory vaccination

Mandatory coronavirus vaccinations among NHS staff in England has been a fiercely debated topic in recent weeks, with the AOP supporting mandatory Covid-19 and flu vaccinations for health and social care staff following a government consultation on the subject in October.

But a new House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee on the Department for Health and Social Care’s (DHSC) proposed legislation to require all NHS staff working ‘face to face’ with service users to be vaccinated against Covid-19 has raised several concerns about what it described as ‘the quality of evidence’ supplied to support the proposed legislation and criticised the ‘lack of clarity’ about how key expressions used in it are to be applied in practice.