Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department's Vaccine Damage Payment Unit is still in operation.

The Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS) provides a one-off, tax-free payment of £120,000 to claimants who have been found, in rare cases and on the balance of probabilities, to have been severely disabled by certain vaccines for a disease listed in the Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979.

Responsibility for the operation of the VDPS transferred from the Department for Work and Pensions to the Department of Health and Social Care on 1 November 2021. Since then, the NHS Business Services Authority has administered the VDPS on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care, which retains responsibility for the policy and legislation governing the scheme.