Vaccinations and Health Screening Services

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld, because I agree very much with what she said. I want to speak mainly about vaccine hesitancy and the important role of vaccines in the developing world. I do not want to bowl the Minister a googly but the Question relates to the Government and vaccines. Through DfID we have an enormously important role in the use of vaccines in the developing world, where for millions of children they are a matter of life and death.

I agree very much with the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld, that the reducing rates of vaccination in this country are not solely the result of the dangerous and destructive cod science peddled on the internet and elsewhere; they are also the result of the difficulty that some families have in accessing services and our inability to bring together in that smooth and creative way that the noble Baroness talked about the services that families need. When families and the NHS are under pressure, people will fall through the net, and we cannot simply blame them for taking bad advice. Like others, I would like to hear from the Minister exactly what the department will do to differentiate between and gain an understanding of these low rates in particular areas or localities or among certain types of families and how we will target measures to improve them.

I also agree that mandatory vaccination is not the way forward. However, it is important to look at specific instances. I have a grandchild who goes to a nursery-type play group where one child, recently admitted, has multiple food allergies. The nursery has decided to ban the other children from bringing any food into the nursery, and all children who have lunch there eat a diet that suits that individual child. This is done to protect one member of that community whose life could be in danger. Where a nursery, for example, has an immuno-compromised child as one of its members, I think it is perfectly reasonable to look very carefully at whether it is responsible to admit to that nursery children who are not vaccinated and to put that child’s life at risk. I am not talking at all about universal compulsion but I think that there might be instances where it is important to take responsibility as a community for particular children who need us to do that.

Huge efforts are being made—I have already mentioned DfID’s work—through the global alliance on vaccinations, the Vaccine Alliance, UNICEF and the WHO to save the lives of millions of children across the world. We have programmes that have halved deaths from measles and tetanus since 2010, in less than 10 years. We are investing in new vaccine development that is absolutely essential if we are going to deal with malaria, TB, dengue and Zika. There are parallels here, but the obstacles are different. Because of false information, polio vaccinators have been killed in Pakistan and there has been difficulty in administering the Ebola virus during the current outbreak in DRC. When there is conflict it is difficult to get to families.

Finally, I hope that the Minister and her department will take notice of the work of Professor Peter Hotez. He is not only a vaccinologist and a paediatrician; he also has an adult daughter with autism. Personal testimonies are tremendously important. He has written a book called Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism. He will be in London at the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society for Tropical Medicine next month. I hope that the department will listen and learn from what he has to say.