Vaccinations

Lord Suri Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Suri (Con)]

My Lords, it is vital that primary carers help increase the delivery of a structured mass vaccination programme to deal with conditions such as shingles and influenza. Are the Government going to act promptly, given that the fundamentals are in place since Covid-19 has been dealt with?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. There is a lot of innovation in vaccines. Over the years, we have seen combined vaccinations, and some places have moved away from vaccinations to orals or to not necessarily needing vaccinations at all. I am aware of that, and I would be very happy to write to my noble friend with more details.