Covid-19 Inquiry Module 4 Report: Government Response
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stuart. I thank the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for securing this important debate. He focused on one particular aspect of module 4 on vaccines and therapeutics: the recompense scheme. I would like to broaden the conversation slightly. Alongside the learnings, the module contains a lot of positive narrative. As a public health consultant who worked during the pandemic, both here and with public health partners in other countries, I want to recognise the huge public value of the UK’s sustained investment in our NHS, public health and scientific research. Thanks to that investment, capabilities were in place prior to the pandemic that meant the UK was in a position to authorise and begin delivering effective covid-19 vaccines within a year of the first identified UK case. By September 2022, more than 150 million doses of the three principal vaccines had been administered in the UK, including the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which was developed here in the UK thanks to years of scientific research. That research capacity is part of a wider global partnership that allows us to ensure that vaccine development can be undertaken swiftly and accurately, both during a pandemic and for other essential vaccinations, such as our flu response. I want to mention the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation in South Africa. It is a key partner, which identified the omicron variant during the pandemic, and it is now critical in identifying influenza strains for the development of our influenza vaccination programme every year. It would be good to hear from the Minister a little more about how we are continuing to build the international scientific partnership for vaccine development and pandemic preparedness, particularly in respect of the 100-day mission, where we aim to work with global partners to make safe, effective and affordable diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines available within just 100 days of identifying a future pandemic threat. As well as the importance of ensuring that we have the capacity to develop vaccines swiftly and efficiently as part of a global response, the module highlighted the issue of equitable access to vaccines, and the role that existing health inequalities played in UK vaccination <span id="121WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="121WH"></span>coverage. The inquiry identified familiar themes regarding the reasons for lower uptake of the vaccine in some communities and groups of people. As the inquiry rightly highlighted, vaccine inequality is not simply an issue of individual behaviour; it is also a reflection of how services are designed, how communities experience public institutions and whether the health system can meet people where they are in their daily lives. There is also the issue of public trust in the system that is administering the vaccines. It should be noted that that cannot simply be manufactured through a national communication campaign at the moment of crisis; it must be earned over time through reliable services, honest information and meaningful relationships with communities. There is a useful distinction to be made between legitimate questions about vaccine safety and deliberate misinformation. We need to engage with this area proactively and positively, allow people to have their voices heard and ensure that all available facts and evidence are clearly communicated. Will the Minister please update us on how lessons learned from vaccine hesitancy and the health inequality patterns that were observed during the pandemic are now being used to inform our UK vaccination strategy, particularly in the light of worrying recent patterns in childhood vaccination for diseases such as measles and the dropping of the explicit World Health Organisation target of 95% coverage that was put in place to ensure population herd immunity? Finally, I want to acknowledge my public health, clinical and care colleagues who contributed so much to the pandemic response, some of whom tragically gave their lives in order to care for other people. Directors of public health, local authorities, primary care and community organisations should remain a central part of the solution to ensuring vaccine equity. We must ensure that the lessons learned from the inquiry allow us to support their essential work, so that we can respond swiftly to the next pandemic.