Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure the (a) economic and (b) societal effects of medical treatments are taken into account when assessing medicines, in the context of the approval and procurement of covid-19 vaccine candidates.

The Government has accepted the recommendations from the independent Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to authorise three COVID-19 vaccines for use - Pfizer/BioNTech, Oxford/AstraZeneca and Moderna. While this approval is not specifically on the basis of economic and societal benefits, it is on the grounds of patient safety. No vaccine would be deployed in the United Kingdom unless the expected standards of safety, quality and efficacy are met.