Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to increase the take up of the MMR vaccine in London.

NHS England, NHS Improvement and Public Health England are working with key regional and local stakeholders, for example, Directors of Quality Clinical Commissioning Groups and local authorities, to implement actions from the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) Elimination Strategy to increase take-up of the MMR vaccine in London.

Examples of recent actions include:

- Implementing the catch-up vaccination programme for 10 and 11-year olds through general practices;

- An MMR campaign targeted at 18-25-year olds (including ‘pop up’ clinics in 16 universities across London in October);

- Notifications from Child Health Information Services to help general practices identify children with due and overdue vaccinations; and

- Initiatives led by local teams to address inequalities in vaccine uptake (e.g. vaccine clinics for the Charedi community in Hackney).

In addition, over the next year, the MMR will be offered in all schools, and there will be increased access to vaccination appointments such as vaccine clinics on Friday evenings.