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 disabilities 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 of a COVID-19 vaccine at a population level.  For the first phase, the JCVI has advised that the vaccine be given to care home residents and staff, as well as frontline health and social care workers, then to the rest of the population in order of age and clinical risk factors which includes people who are clinically extremely vulnerable and/or have underlying health conditions.

Adults with severe or profound learning difficulties and adults with Down’s syndrome are considered to be ‘at risk’ and therefore included as priorities in phase one of the COVID-19 vaccination programme’s roll out.