Vaccinations

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what lessons they have learned from the high uptake of Covid-19 vaccinations in the United Kingdom; and what plans they have, if any, to apply similar strategies to increase vaccination rates for other conditions, such as shingles or influenza.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Kamall) (Con)]

We have seen high levels of Covid-19 vaccine uptake by being flexible and innovative in how we get vaccinations into patients’ arms and being supported by strong national and targeted communications and community-led initiatives. We have sought to learn lessons from the rollout and the NHS is working collaboratively with partners to design future NHS vaccination services for Covid-19 vaccines and other vaccination and immunisation programmes, considering how we can better use data to improve access to information.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister. One of lessons of the pandemic was that flu vaccines were given free to people aged between 50 and 64. The Government have said that from next autumn people will have to pay. The Minister will be aware that vaccination rates around the world, particularly in Australia, have increased dramatically. Will he reconsider this policy, given that we need to encourage that age group to have the vaccine?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right; we have received advice on the flu vaccine and at the moment it is free to those aged 65 and over. The issue, frankly, is balancing resources. A number of people in the system are saying that if you keep mandating vaccines, it means they cannot get on with tackling the elective backlog. On balance, at the moment it seems better to focus on the elective backlog, but UKHSA and others are monitoring the situation very closely.