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Why is Sturgeon hiding behind the JCVI?

Fraser Bremner-Pool/Getty Images

For much of its 58-year long existence, the scientists who sat on the government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) lived a life of happy obscurity. But now the poor men and women who make up its membership have been thrust into the limelight amid furious Whitehall rows over whether 12 to 15 year-olds should be given the Covid vaccine. 

Members of Boris Johnson’s government are said to disagree with the JCVI’s rulings but have had their hands tied by the committee’s status as a statutory basis for giving advice in England and Wales – though intriguingly not Northern Ireland or Scotland. Judging by Nicola Sturgeon’s recent comments however, you would be forgiven for not knowing this distinction.

At the end of last month the First Minister told a Covid press conference: ‘I suppose if I was making a plea to the JCVI – it is not for me to tell them what decision to reach, they have got to do that on the basis of the evidence – but please make it quickly.’ She was assisted in such claims by her National Clinical Director (and sometime ministerial shield) Jason Leitch, who insisted that the vaccine programme for school children was ‘ready to go’ as soon as the JCVI issued their advice.

Similar comments have been made in relation to a possible booster programme, something ministers across the UK had banked on to save us from another bleak winter of restrictions and illness.  But what is often missed is that the JCVI has no legal basis to enforce restrictions on the governments of Scotland or Northern Ireland. Its Code of Practice states: 

JCVI has no statutory basis for providing advice to Ministers in Scotland or Northern Ireland. However, health departments from these countries may choose to accept the Committee’s advice or recommendations.

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