Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of vaccination rates among babies and children for tuberculosis in (a) Birmingham, Edgbaston constituency, (b) Birmingham and (c) the West Midlands.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) monitors trends in the level of childhood vaccination rates, including Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccination, at upper tier local authority, region and country level.

Official vaccine coverage estimates, for the BCG vaccine, are measured for eligible children in England at three months and 12 months of age and are published quarterly by UKHSA. These are available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/cover-of-vaccination-evaluated-rapidly-cover-programme-2024-to-2025-quarterly-data

Annual estimates are published by NHS England at local authority level, and are available at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-immunisation-statistics/england-2023-24

Edgbaston falls within the Birmingham Upper Tier Local Authority. The latest data, published in December 2024, captures BCG coverage at the age of three months for children born April to June 2024 and at age 12 months for children born July to September 2023. Measured at three months, coverage was 87.0% in Birmingham and 87.1% in the West Midlands. Measured at 12 months, it was 85.3% in Birmingham and 87.0% in the West Midlands. These figures are higher than the coverage of 78.4% at 3 months and 84.1% at 12 months in England.