HC Deb 14 June 1906 vol 158 cc1122-3
MR. BRANCH (Middlesex, Enfield)

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War † See Cols. 812, 813. whether his attention has been called to a protest by the workmen engaged at the Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield Lock, against compulsory vaccination as a condition of employment there; and whether, seeing that the workers regard such a condition as contracting themselves out of their rights as citizens, he will take steps to abolish this condition of their employment.

MR. HALDANE

The question was raised in March last at an interview between the Secretary to the Employees' Union and the Chief Superintendent of the Ordnance Factories. I am not prepared to depart from the decisions of my predecessors not to admit men to the various Ordnance Factories unless they consent to be vaccinated.

MR. BRANCH

asked whether insistence on vaccination had not been followed by serious results to individual workers.

MR. HALDANE

did not think serious results had followed. Wherever there was a large body of men working together the case seemed to be that risks might result from not insisting upon vaccination.

MR. LUPTON (Lincolnshire, Sleaford)

asked whether the Secretary for War would examine the Army medical records and ascertain whether they would not show that there had been over a certain period of years a thousand cases of smallpox, a hundred of them fatal, in carefully re-vaccinated troops.

MR. HALDANE

I think the hon. Member must give me notice of that Question if he wants a definite Answer to it.