Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that people (a) from a BAME background and (b) who are more vulnerable to covid-19 receive the vaccination in a timely manner.

On 13 February the Government published the United Kingdom COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake Plan, which aims to improve uptake across all communities on a national scale, including those from black, Asian or other minority ethnic backgrounds and those who are more vulnerable to COVID-19. The plan takes a local, community-led approach, with support provided from the Government, NHS England and NHS Improvement and local authorities to coordinate and enable action.

On 25 January we released £23.75million funding to support our Community Champions Scheme. Through the Community Champions scheme councils and voluntary organisations will deliver a wide range of measures to communicating accurate health information. The funding is specifically targeted at areas with plans to reach groups such as older people, disabled people and people from ethnic minority backgrounds who according to the latest evidence are more likely to suffer long-term impacts and poor outcomes from COVID-19. Each of the sixty councils in receipt of funding have developed their own plan to improve communications with these groups including helplines, school programmes, workplace engagement, phoning those in at risk groups as well as training sessions to help people provide information and advice. On 24 February 2021, the COVID-19 vaccine deployment programme, working with partners, made available an extra £4.2 million initially, to further support and enable locally led community engagement in all areas with health inequalities to support those who are most vulnerable to get their vaccine.