Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 8 November 2022 to Question 77275 on Coronavirus: Vaccination, what (a) criteria and (b) guidance is used by medical assessors to ensure the consistency of assessment across cases of (i) multi-system inflammatory syndrome and (ii) other auto-immune responses as a result of a covid-19 vaccine when interpreting the criteria of the (A) Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme, (B) schedule 2 of the Social Security (General Benefit) Regulations 1982 and (C) section 103 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992.

All claims are assessed using a consistent approach, regardless of the type of case. To ensure consistency, the NHS Business Services Authority has recently introduced sampling to quality assure medical assessments. This allows claims to be progressed more rapidly while ensuring the high standards required, in line with Schedule 2 of the Social Security (General Benefit) Regulations 1982 and Section 103 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992.

Guidance and resources to support medical assessments include but are not limited to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s data such as Yellow Card reports; vaccine product information updates; the Green Book; other research; and systematic reviews such the Cochrane library.