Strictly speaking the cohorts specified by Labour for its new queue jumping policy of priority vaccinations for key workers, included; MPs, civil servants and journalists. Labour’s post-PMQs press release stated that “approximately 6.2 million key workers would benefit from being moved up the priority list”. Labour used the ONS analysis – that there are 10.6 million key workers, 4.4 million of whom are already vaccine priorities due to working in healthcare or having underlying health conditions. Digging deeper however…

The ONS’ 10.6 million comes from the government’s list of key workers whose children are currently entitled to go to school and those entitled to priority testing. As well as the aforementioned MPs, journalists and civil servants this definition also includes local councillors and investment bankers.

A Whitehall source confirmed to Guido that it had always been understood that MPs were critical workers, and therefore they do fall under the “6.2 million key workers” as per Labour’s briefing. When Guido put this to a Labour Party spokesperson she quickly clarified to Guido that they weren’t so stupid as to call for MPs to be prioritised over ordinary workers, and do not consider MPs and journalists to be priorities.

We didn’t bother to ask about the investment bankers. Labour’s definition of priority key-workers is, it seems, restricted to unionised key workers…