Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of preparedness for future pandemics.

The Department is embedding lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic within its approach to pandemic preparedness. This includes amending the approach to cover all five routes of communicable disease transmission, rather than focusing on planning for specific threats. We are working with partners in the health and social care system, including the UK Health Security Agency and NHS England, to maintain a flexible and scalable set of response capabilities that can be adapted to any future novel disease. The approach to pandemic preparedness also recognises that the underlying resilience of the health and social care system is crucial to the ability to respond to a novel disease threat.

The UK COVID-19 Inquiry published its first report on 18 July 2024, which focuses on resilience and preparedness for a pandemic, and the Department will consider the inquiry’s recommendations in full.