Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what actions (1) NHS England, and (2) Public Health England, are taking to improve levels of vaccination coverage of recommended vaccines for adults in areas with low levels of uptake.

Through the National Health Service public health functions agreement (S7A), NHS England commissions services from a variety of providers across England, and has a national service specification outlining the national standards and expectations. Immunisation programmes are delivered in partnership with Public Health England (PHE) and the Department, who use contracting and commissioning levers to reduce variation in local levels of performance between different geographical areas. In addition, organisations are working together on a number of priority programmes where there is variation, such as measles, mumps, and rubella to put in place effective actions for improvement.

PHE works in partnership with NHS England and Directors of Public Health to ensure that local population needs are understood and addressed by local immunisation services, and with NHS England local teams to provide leadership and coordination to sustain and improve the successful delivery of existing programmes.

PHE constantly monitors cases of vaccine preventable disease and levels of vaccine coverage.