Vaccinations

Baroness Merron Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I am afraid I am not aware of the details to which my noble friend refers, but I would be happy if he wrote to me. I will then take that back to my department.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, more than one in 10 children are not fully protected against measles by the time they start school, and research shows that many parents are unaware that it can lead to serious complications, such as pneumonia and brain inflammation —or, indeed, that it can be fatal. With the major focus on Covid vaccinations over recent years, what assessment has been made of the effect on the uptake of routine vaccinations, including MMR? What steps are being taken to restore any affected vaccination levels?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Baroness raises a very important point. We have to recognise that the UK has one of the most comprehensive childhood and adolescent immunisation programmes in the world. We have seven national childhood immunisation programmes, three adolescent programmes and two elderly programmes. Vaccine uptake in the UK remains high overall, but there has been some decline in routine childhood vaccines—so we have been looking at school-based immunisation programmes, some of which were clearly interrupted due to Covid. At the same time, from October to December 2021, the coverage of childhood vaccination programmes actually increased.