Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimates they have made of the likely benefits of providing the quadrivalent HPV vaccine to all adolescents in the UK on a gender-neutral basis.

In 2008 when forming its recommendation for vaccination against Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) in the United Kingdom, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) did not recommend vaccination of boys because the evidence indicated vaccinating boys was unlikely to be cost-effective.

The JCVI keeps the eligibility criteria of all vaccination programmes under review. In October 2013 the JCVI recommended a HPV sub-committee be formed to consider a number of issues including the potential extension of the programme to include adolescent boys, because of new and emerging evidence on the association of HPV vaccine types with non-cervical cancers.

The JCVI subsequently requested that modelling be undertaken by Public Health England (PHE) to re-examine the impact and cost-effectiveness of extending the HPV vaccination programme to adolescent boys. It is anticipated that PHE will submit this work to the JCVI by early 2017 which will include an assessment of the likely benefits of providing the quadrivalent HPV vaccine to all adolescents.