MMR Vaccine

Lord Allan of Hallam Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

There are two main approaches. If a child is under 11, we would prefer to have a parent present, for obvious reasons—because it involves a vaccination—so that is normally done through the primary care system, through nurses. Post 11, because you do not need the parent there, that is where schools really come into effect. In particular, there is a school-age assisted immunisation providers programme that goes into every school in a particular area, targets it and speaks to every child to see whether they have had their vaccination—and they can give it on the spot if they have not.

[Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the experience of both the MMR and Covid vaccination programmes shows that vaccine hesitancy is actually a very complex problem with multiple factors? Given the importance of high vaccination rates for public health, are the Government commissioning any research from academic experts in misinformation and disinformation so that we can understand what kinds of government campaigns will work and which ones will not and will only reinforce vaccine hesitancy?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

The noble Lord is correct about trying to make sure that we learn the lessons from all these areas. The approach that they have been responding to so far is very much “horses for courses”. In the last six months alone, they have had four different types of campaign. We do not have the results from those campaigns yet, but the point is a very good one and I will make sure that we get those results from the research and share them.