September 22, 2021 5.03 pm This story is over 31 months old

Lincoln MP speaks out against child vaccinations for COVID-19

He wants the government to reconsider and “do no harm”
By Local Democracy Reporter

Karl McCartney, MP for Lincoln, has asked the government to reconsider their stance on administering the COVID-19 vaccine to children, asking that they “do no harm”.

Mr McCartney gave the speech during a debate with fellow members of parliament on Tuesday, September 21, in which the topic of offering the vaccine for coronavirus to school children in the UK was discussed.

Calls were made for further trials of the vaccine to go ahead to ensure the safety of the doses before giving them to younger people, after the UK’s chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty recommended that 12-15 year-olds get jabbed on public health grounds.

This comes after the joint committee on vaccination and immunisation (JVCI) had previously said COVID-19 presents a low risk for healthy children, and that the vaccine would only offer slight benefits.

Lincoln MP Karl McCartney. | Photo: Daniel Jaines

In his speech, Mr McCartney said that 50-70% of children have contracted and survived COVID-19, and called the government’s claims that this will protect children “a fallacy”.

“Regardless of the chief medical officer’s overruling of the JCVI, I would say that when it comes to our nation’s children and young people, the people in these roles should remember that their actions should do no harm”, Karl McCartney said.

“Our colleagues in government—whether newly appointed or not—should also be mindful, in respect of the electorate’s children, that they should do no harm.

“We are told that any vaccination programme would not negate potential future school closures, so what is the point? Where is the political backbone? Is the government’s plan that any future upsurge in age 12-to-15 cases could be ascribed to an epsilon or a zeta variant, or perhaps an eta or a theta variant?

“Will anyone give an iota of credence to such an occurrence after what we have seen with hospital transference to care homes and the subsequent surge in cases in our older generation, and with the recent vaccinations and the delta variant that has emerged? We need to do no harm for myriad, if not a veritable plethora of reasons.”

Mr McCartney then went on to say that vaccine passports are neither a first nor second line of defence for young people against a “potential so-called winter wave of coronavirus”, suggesting there is no medium or long-term data to back up the need for mandatory vaccination.

He continues: “I admire Chris Whitty and his colleagues for many things that they have done in the past 18 months. However, citing educational disruption, or the fear of more of it, as a justification for child vaccination against JCVI advice seems a little desperate, as far as I am concerned.”

When asked by The Lincolnite about his stance on the coronavirus vaccine and if people should take it or he himself is double-jabbed, Mr McCartney twice failed to reply; once in July and again in September.