Vaccinations

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Indeed, this is a really important point: the essential issue must be trust. As politicians in Westminster or officials in Whitehall, we must all have enough humility to recognise that we may not be able to cut through that. We have been looking at working with a number of different people in those communities and working out what the best message and channels will be. For example, we have spoken to faith leaders in some places. Even though some people may not be of a certain faith—they may be agonistic or atheist—they still respect faith leaders. In other places, we are looking at where people who are vaccine-hesitant go, and whether we can get the message—or even the vaccines—across to them.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, much of the success of our own vaccine development programme was based on investment in global health over many years. Is the Minister confident that, given the possibility of future pandemics, the research capacity in this country, and our contribution to international agencies such as the Global Fund, will not be prejudiced by the cut in our ODA spending?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

How we work together globally, learn from each other and co-operate are really important. One of the bits in my portfolio is international relations and, particularly, co-operation on health issues. I have been in G7 and G20 meetings on this. One of the big issues we must all look at is AMR—antimicrobial resistance—and how we can, first, stop the use of antibiotics in both human and animal health and, at the same time, help those countries that use quite a lot to build capacity.