Labour has today called on employers to support the national effort to get Britain vaccinated by giving staff paid time off to attend their vaccination appointments and escort vulnerable relatives to appointments, support their staff in signing up as NHS volunteers to help in the vaccine roll-out and use their platforms to promote the importance of the vaccine and combat dangerous anti-vax misinformation.
In a letter to the ‘Big 5’ business groups – the CBI, BCC, FSB, IOD and MakeUK – Labour’s Deputy Leader Angela Rayner has paid tribute to Britain’s businesses for stepping up during this crisis and told business leaders that “we should all be proud of the role British businesses have played in the national effort” to defeat coronavirus, from providing free school meals when the government failed to feed hungry children to adapting their operations to produce hand sanitiser and PPE.
Pointing to official OBR figures showing that the Covid crisis is costing our economy over £5 billion and 23,000 job losses per week, Rayner warns that delays to the roll out of the vaccine will see more damage to our economy, more working people losing their jobs and more businesses going to the wall.
In her letter to business leaders today, Rayner emphasised that “every effort can make a difference” and “we all have a role to play” in the national effort to roll out the vaccine as soon as possible so our economy and businesses can recover, committing the Labour Party to working with businesses to “rebuild our country and our communities in the months and years ahead”.
Rayner’s call to ensure workers have time off work in order to attend vaccination appointments and escort vulnerable family members to their appointments comes ahead of a visit to a vaccination centre in her constituency in Oldham today as part of Labour’s #LetsVaccinateBritain campaign to sign up tens of thousands of volunteers to support the NHS in rolling out the vaccine.
