Coronavirus Vaccine

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

As ever, the noble Lord is extremely wise in his observation. He is entirely right to hold us to account. There is no point in enjoying this fine moment too much when you have the noble Lord, Lord Patel, on your case reminding you about the next big challenge around the corner. He is right that pharmacovigilance is essential. We need to make sure that this and other vaccines work and that we learn from the behaviours of all of them. That is precisely why we put the deployment of this vaccine through the NHS. There was a temptation to set up an alternative agency and focus on the actual injection of the vaccine over all other matters. Instead we have run it through the NHS digital process, which means that all the information around the vaccine is put very firmly into the GP record. That means that we can do population-wide analysis of the results of the vaccine. We have a very large research community in the UK both in the companies such as Pfizer, which, as he knows, are responsible for pharmacovigilance, and in the university sector. We will have all those records available for them to do the follow-up work that he rightly emphasises.

[Lord Dobbs (Con) [V]]

My noble friend will know that I have reservations about some aspects of government policy, but the news about the vaccine is wholly good news. It is a triumph for all concerned and I join in with his praise for them, although my noble friend himself should not be shy about taking his own share of the credit. He mentioned that other vaccines are coming down the road—in the pipeline, I think he said—including the Oxford vaccine. These vaccines have different characteristics and require different handling. How do the Government plan to distribute and discriminate between the different vaccines? Will one get priority over another? While I understand that he cannot be precise, can he offer any further guidance about how soon we can hope that everyone who wants one will have a vaccination available?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his kind words. I reassure him that everyone in Britain who wants a vaccine will get one. In fact, we are going to do everything that we can to encourage everyone in Britain to have a vaccine. We believe that prevention is better than cure, and that vaccines such as the ones coming down the pipeline offer the best possible fightback against this horrible disease. With regard to the different properties of the vaccine, his observation is entirely right: it is likely that the different vaccines have different properties, not least that some are much easier to transport than others, but some might work better, for example, with children or with those susceptible to other conditions. We do not have full data on the other vaccines so it is impossible to make those comparisons at this stage, but I assure him that when we have the data we will make sensible decisions along those lines.