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 increase childhood flu vaccination rates.

During the 2021/22 flu season, over 3.8 million school-aged children had been vaccinated by the end of January 2022. We have begun planning for the 2022/23 flu season to further increase uptake. We are working with regional commissioning teams, school-aged providers, schools and primary care providers, in addition to collaborating with COVID-19 vaccination teams to consider where those successes can be applied to the seasonal flu programme. In addition to the targeted work of locally commissioned services to meet the needs and challenges of their local populations, communications will be developed to reach all eligible groups.