Having Covid vaccine early was not wrong – Worcestershire County Council chief

Paul Robinson, the chief executive of Worcestershire County Council, was criticised in The Sun after it emerged that he and Jonathan Fitzgerald-Guy, the council's assistant director for transformation and commercial, had received spare jabs despite neither being classed as high risk.

Speaking to the Worcester News yesterday, Mr Robinson said that although he regretted the controversy and reputational damage caused by the issue, if he was offered the vaccine again under the same circumstances he would take it.

He said: “I don’t mind people talking about whether we should or shouldn’t have had the vaccine, but I think it’s important that people talk about that around the facts and actually what occurred. If people want to debate the facts about who should have vaccines, they need to do it on the facts and actually lots of what is being put out there now is just completely untrue.

“On a personal level I believe that vaccines are important. I trust the science and it’s an important thing to do in terms of ending the Covid position that we’re currently in.

“However what I have always said, even before all this media attention, is that I would only take the vaccine if we were formally offered it via the NHS and in an official way so that there was no accusation of queue jumping.

"So it’s very interesting that this should all have blown up when actually the thing I had absolutely made sure of, in terms of processes at the council, is that we would not be accused of that.

“The offer (to have the vaccine) came as an invite from work through my official work computer. It came out officially by the NHS through the CCG and was then sent out by our HR Department to, I think, 103 people including me.

"No councillors were offered the vaccination during this process.

“The way in which we were offered the vaccine and why it came to us is to do with a number of factors. The Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisations (JCVI) is the national group who decide who can and who cannot have vaccines and most people are aware of the widely publicised priority groups: NHS staff, the over 80s, people with significant underlying health conditions and people in care homes. But within that guidance from the CCG it includes health and social care staff either within the NHS or the local authority.

“Now, that’s very very key in terms of why did we get offered the jab. People have said, and I’ve read all the comments, why didn’t they go to a policeman, why didn’t they go to firefighters or teachers, and that is because we couldn’t. The national guidance from their JVCI says it can only go to those special groups I have mentioned above.

“The county council is a health and social care provider – we run adult social care and children’s social care. We run all of the responses to Covid through our emergency planning. I am also directly managing public health.

“All of our frontline people that were eligible have had the jab or been offered the jab, that’s over 1,000 people.

"The place where they were delivering the jabs was the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch and the NHS decided that that particular site was only for keyworkers from the NHS and the county council staff – members of the public were not allowed to go there for their vaccine, we didn’t make that decision.

“So when you see the comments about 'Why couldn’t you give it to the elderly person next door? Or why couldn't you give it to somebody in Redditch? They couldn’t do it because the site was not open for any people other than staff. So that’s the issue.

"We had already done our frontline people that were allowed to be done. Yes, there are other frontline workers in the council but they’re not in the category and therefore cannot be put forward for the vaccine.

“They were closing down the Alex hospital in two days – there was only two days to go. They had opened their last pack of vaccines and you cannot move the vaccine, it must be kept in the fridge.

“They took the last pack out and were closing the staff site because they had inoculated everybody within the eligible group.

“So, when people say 'Why didn’t you give it to the cleaner at the hospital or the porter?' It’s because they’ve had it long before we were offered.

“What some people seem to have gotten in their mind is that somebody rang me up and said ‘the vaccine is available, Paul’ and I ran up the road and had this thing stuck in my arm. In reality I was sent an invite by the NHS alongside 103 others in our organisation and I had to book in the same way as everyone else.”

When asked, having seen the controversy, if he could go back in time would he still take the vaccine, Mr Robinson said: “Yes. Absolutely I would. It wouldn’t have changed my position at all. Am I concerned about the controversy it caused and the reputational damage to me personally and to the council? Absolutely.

“But, in terms of our decision. Did we do anything that took us outside of the JCVI guidance? Absolutely not and that has been confirmed.

“We had offered it to all of our people internally that we could. If I wasn’t allowed to have the vaccine I wouldn’t have been offered it. This is the fundamental issue – the guidelines come from the CCG, not from us.

“If I wasn’t one of the people covered by those guidelines I wouldn’t have taken it. It was always my intention to until I was given an official invitation – that’s always been my position. I thought that would come through my own doctor sometime in the future, but it came through my employer. I did check, I did ask the HR manager to go back to the CCG and say this does mean us, doesn’t it, and they said yes.”

In part two of our interview tomorrow, Mr Robinson will reveal what being painted as a ‘council fatcat villain’ in a national newspaper is like, and speak openly about the criticism he has received from members of the public.