Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps (a) his Department and (b) other public bodies (i) have taken and (ii) are planning to take to help ensure that the (A) objective and (B) outcome of covid-19 candidate vaccine trials are preventing (1) covid-19 transmission and (2) serious covid-19 cases and fatalities.

The National Institute for Health Research provides support and critical infrastructure for clinical trials – making the UK well-suited to facilitate clinical trials that are essential to the development of any vaccine.

All vaccines are tested through three phases of clinical trials, to ensure they meet the usual rigorous standards, data must include the results of clinical trials, animal studies, manufacturing and in-process quality controls, consistency in batches production, and testing data. Clinical trials of any vaccine must follow a predefined development pathway, with regulatory oversight provided by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). The MHRA will seek advice from the independent expert advisors on the Commission on Human Medicines and its Expert Advisory Group on the risks and benefits of any vaccine. A vaccine will only be deployed once it has been proved to be safe and effective.