Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the remit is of the UK Vaccines Research and Development Network.

The focus of the UK Vaccine Network is to bring together experts from industry, academia, philanthropy and government to make targeted investments in world-leading vaccine candidates, vaccine platform technology and vaccine manufacturing technology to combat diseases with epidemic potential in low and middle income countries, such as Ebola and Zika.

The UK Vaccine Network will allocate funding to world leading science in the areas above, and funding awards will only be made following appropriate competitive processes, and rigorous, international expert peer review of all applications. The criteria used as part of individual funding decisions will be decided on a competition by competition basis, following international expert advice.