Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Hain Excerpts

Tuesday 16th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the Minister, but we do have quite a lot to get through, so shorter answers would help.

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

What sort of early intervention have the Government ordered to prevent a contagious spread of measles from the outbreak in the Neath and Swansea area of more than 700 serious cases? Thousands of parents across Britain will have been tormented by the choice of whether to vaccinate their children for measles, mumps and rubella because of the scare. Surely the Minister should take serious action to instruct public health officials to combat this issue.

[Dr Poulter]

We are taking exactly that action to make sure that the vaccine is available and to promote the uptake of it. The right hon. Gentleman will of course be aware that the problems and concerns about the failure of some families to take up the vaccine resulted from some mis-used data in the past. That was a regrettable incident concerning the use of medical data, and is unfortunately causing great problems now. We are committed to making sure that those vaccines are available to the children who need it.