Lord Allan of Hallam
Main Page: Lord Allan of Hallam (Non-affiliated - Life peer)National Immunisation Programme
Lord Allan of Hallam Excerpts
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
I thank my noble friend for the question and her kind words, and I will let the Minister, my noble friend Lord Markham, know. My noble friend raises a good point. Over £405 million was invested by the Vaccine Taskforce to secure and scale up the UK’s vaccine manufacturing capabilities to ensure a robust response to Covid-19 and potential future health emergencies. This includes support for the chemical producer Croda to increase the UK manufacturing capacity of speciality lipids, funding for CPI to develop and equip the RNA Centre of Excellence in Darlington, support for skills development through the Advanced Therapies Skills Training Network, and funding for the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult. The Government have learned from Covid and are investing heavily in our home-based manufacturing.
Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)
My Lords, while the politicians may be distracted over the next few months, there is nothing to stop technical teams continuing to work on important tools such as easy online access to immunisation records for adults and children. Before he shuts his office up, can the noble Lord provide us with a written update on progress on online access to immunisation records? To him and his noble friend Lord Markham I say so long, and thanks for all the letters.
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
I will pass on that message from the noble Lord, who has consistently asked excellent questions about the modernisation behind the scenes of the NHS and of business practices, and on moving from paper to digitising. He is absolutely right and I will take his question back to the department. Moving forward, it is very important that we, and our children and our children’s children, can pick up the app and see what vaccinations we have had. It is very simple and straightforward. I have to say that, in recent years, the Government have made very significant progress on the NHS app, but there is more to do.