Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the priority given to adults with learning difficulties, as part of the covid-19 vaccination programme.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) are the independent experts who advise the Government on which vaccines the United Kingdom should use and provide advice on prioritisation at a population level.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has advised that those with severe and profound learning disabilities, and those with learning disabilities residing in residential care, should be offered vaccine in priority group six and that all individuals with Down’s syndrome should be offered vaccination in priority group four. On 24 February the JCVI published a clarification of their advice on vaccinating people with a learning disability.

The JCVI confirmed their advice that priority should be given to those with a severe and profound learning disability. To efficiently identify those who are more severely affected and may not be invited for vaccination due to coding of learning disability on general practitioner (GP) systems, the JCVI supports a practical approach of inviting everyone who is on the GP Learning Disability Register for vaccination in cohort six.