Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason the Joint Committee on Vaccination advised in paragraph 33 of the minutes of its February 2018 meeting that the benefits of simplifying the NHS immunisation schedule outweigh the additional disease that its modelling predicts under its proposal to reduce the number of doses in the infant pneumococcal vaccination programme.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) considered evidence on a reduced dose pneumococcal vaccination programme in meetings held on 4 October 2017 and 7 February 2018. In making their recommendation, the JCVI reviewed in detail all available evidence on pneumococcal infections nationally across all ages. This included estimates of the impact of change in the infant vaccination schedule on the incidence of both invasive pneumococcal disease and non-invasive pneumococcal disease, including pneumonia.

The JCVI keeps all immunisation programmes under constant review, and will re-assess its recommendations if new evidence requires it.