Vaccination Rates: England

I beg to move, That this House has considered vaccination rates in England. It is an honour to serve under your chairship today, Mrs Barker. I am pleased to co-sponsor this debate alongside colleagues from the Health and Social Care Committee who are also here today. It is very easy, from the vantage point of the 21st century, to forget that about half of children used to die before the age of 15 from infection and disease. Thankfully, we now have vaccines and our routine vaccination schedule providing protection against 15 preventable infections across our lifetimes. For decades, our system was one of the best in the world. The childhood diseases that used to cause so much suffering—measles, polio and others—sound like things from history books. I am sure we all have memories of our early school-based vaccinations and flu jabs in the winter period, and the joy of the discovery of the covid-19 vaccine and the hope it brought of a return to normality. So why have this debate today? Because, despite a seemingly continued record of progress and innovation since 2012, our vaccination system has been sleepwalking into a crisis. The percentage of eligible people getting the major vaccines has been falling year on year, dropping below the 95% coverage recommended by the World Health Organisation to prevent onward transmission. We have now undoubtedly hit a crisis point. Across England as a whole, the 95% target is not being met for any routine childhood vaccination programme and many adult programmes. For example, in 2024-25, only 83.7% of five-year-olds in England had both doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. In my own constituency, the figure is even lower, at 74%. We are now seeing measles outbreaks in our cities and, shockingly, we have lost our measles elimination status nationally. Tragically, three children died this year from measles—a totally preventable illness. When questioned about these issues at the Health and Social Care Committee, officials assured us that actions were under way and the tide was turning, but the most recent vaccine stats, released at the end of August, unfortunately show a continued downward trend. The 6-in-1 vaccine dose three coverage is down, the meningitis B dose three coverage is down, and the rotavirus dose two coverage is also down. This is also a serious equalities issue. Children who grow up unprotected are disproportionately those living in poverty and from ethnic minority communities, and the gap in vaccination status is growing across the country. How has that been allowed to happen in modern Britain? The 2023 vaccination strategy under the last Government was intended to halt the decline, but it is clearly failing, with vaccination rates continuing to fall in the three years since. The WHO target of 95% coverage for all routine vaccination programmes was removed from NHS planning guidance in 2025-26, with the Secretary of State at the time saying, “If everything is a priority, then nothing is”, but the choice not to explicitly prioritise vaccinations is incredibly short-sighted. My colleagues and I on the Health and Social Care Committee held a short inquiry into vaccination rates earlier this year, and we were, to be frank, shocked by the apparent complacency of leading NHS officials. There was no understanding of when it is hoped rates will return to WHO levels, or of whether and when our elimination status will be reached again. There is no target. This debate must be a call to arms to prioritise rebuilding our vaccination system as a matter of utmost urgency and to restore vaccination rates to 95% as soon as possible. Developing an effective vaccination system is not rocket science. Much of the existing strategy is relevant and positive, but we must acknowledge that we are off track. The debate about what is wrong tends to focus on two key issues: access versus hesitancy. The access argument focuses on systemic, practical barriers that make it harder for people to get vaccinated, such as poor appointment availability, ineffective call and recall systems, lack of data linkage and fragmented health systems. On that argument, recent coverage decline is the sign of a system under strain, rather than a loss of confidence. Most patients and parents do trust vaccines: 85% of people polled by Ipsos in 2025 said that vaccines were safe. But people are busy—moving home, switching GPs—and they do not have endless time to navigate a confusing and increasingly fragmented NHS system. The gap between MMR 1 and MMR 2 uptake is stark evidence of this failure, with MMR 1 coverage at five years at 91% and MMR 2 coverage at only 83%. The loss of contact is a system failure. Missed appointments should be chased, and families should retain close contact with trusted health professionals to guide them through the childhood vaccination schedule.

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Our mini-inquiry into vaccination rates found that when rates decline or stall, the problem is often lack of trust and inability to access either trusted health professionals or the appointments themselves. Does he agree that improving the availability of vaccinations and advice from trusted health professionals is key to reversing this worrying trend?

I agree. Those issues are clearly intertwined and cannot be separated. Every contact should count. Shared digital records should identify, at the next GP appointment, pharmacy check-in, health visit or hospital appointment, where vaccines are missing. The system should be enabled, encouraged and paid to act, but this is currently not the case. The hesitancy argument focuses on the growing prevalence of misinformation around vaccines and falling trust in vaccines and health institutions more broadly. Polling shows that these are not the most important factors numerically, but for the 15% of parents who have concerns, they matter. Evidence from the University of Manchester shows that this is especially important for certain population groups. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) just said, the barriers are multifaceted: poor trust and poor access go hand in hand, because the best way to build trust is through regular contact with known, trusted professionals. To maximise vaccine coverage, we need a system that can reliably identify and locate every child or patient missing their vaccination, repeatedly invite them for appointments and make attending appointments as easy as possible, with clear lines of responsibility when targets are missed. To do that effectively, the vaccination system needs adequate resourcing, accurate data and explicit accountability for meeting targets. Currently, we have none of that. The Government have been acting. We are piloting health visits and community pharmacy delivery, although roll-out has been slow and it is unclear when national roll-out will be possible. Parents are now given access to their child’s records through the NHS app, work is under way to improve the consent process for vaccinating children in school. More is being done, and all of that is positive, but the Select Committee is not convinced that that will be enough to restore our vaccination levels to WHO standards, and neither are officials, who are unable to say whether and when levels will be restored. Moving forward, what do we need? We need resourcing. Data I have obtained through parliamentary questions shows that in 2023-24 NHS England spent 0.51% of its total budget, or £852 million, on vaccination, down from 0.65%, or £989 million, in 2022-23. The very year the strategy released, funding was cut. We also need to be honest about what improvement will cost. Vaccinating the last 10% or 15% of any population is not the same task as vaccinating the first 80%, because of deprivation, language barriers and housing instability. All families affected by those factors need more contact with clinicians, and GPs simply do not have the resources to do the necessary outreach. We need to fund not just new medicines and drugs, but their roll-out. We should be using lifetime parental consent to increase uptake of school-age vaccinations, and developing efficient, convenient and ongoing catch-up opportunities in schools, shopping centres, nurseries and family hubs. The school-age immunisation service should be operating a check-and-offer approach at every contact. For the last 15%, we should be willing to fund what actually works: explicit payments to GPs for outreach programmes for underserved communities, including funding for multiple contact attempts, data cleaning, and non-responder tracking, with incentives linked to real outcomes. We should be training healthcare professionals and community groups to have difficult conversations with confidence and making far better use of our community pharmacy network, which is rooted in local areas. We also need clear accountability; the buck has to stop somewhere locally and nationally, with clear vaccination leads at both levels. Since the Lansley reforms in 2012 and the subsequent austerity cuts, lines of accountability have become blurred. From April 2027, integrated care boards will have greater responsibility for commissioning vaccination programmes locally, but who is overseeing the national strategy? That remains unclear. Who will require corrective action when that is deemed to be necessary? That is not clear. The removal of national targets was clearly a step backward for the system. Health officials and clinicians tell us that it is not always clear who is responsible when vaccination rates fall at delivery level in a given neighbourhood. We need a new national action plan that sets out concrete steps that will be taken to return coverage to our WHO targets. We do not have all the systems in place to tell us reliably who has and has not been vaccinated. Data challenges run right through the system. Vaccines given in maternity settings, community pharmacy settings or school often fail to make their way back to the child’s GP surgery because the systems do not talk to each other. How can we expect call-and-recall strategies to work if clinicians do not reliably know which children need to be called? Lastly, on hesitancy, we need to tackle misinformation, regulate it online and hold the peddlers of harmful and potentially deadly misinformation to account. Social media companies must step up their game in bringing down anti-vax information and providing clear, evidence-based health information instead. I know much of this is not easy, but that is why it requires genuine commitment and prioritisation. I thank the Minister for listening; will she outline whether the Government accept that the situation is unacceptable and that urgent action is needed, and whether a clear timeline for meeting the WHO targets can and should be agreed by the NHS? If we are to set a timeline, will a clear action plan be outlined to set us on the path back to 95% of all children being vaccinated, so that we can all see a welcome and vital return of our measles elimination status? We must ensure that every child is safe, that people of all ages get the vaccines they need, and that the UK is once again a global leader in vaccinations.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker, on the second consecutive day. I thank the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales), who set out his case so well that I fear my contribution will add very little to his. Nevertheless, I want to add my voice in support of this very important topic. The issue of vaccination rates is critical to public health. Even small drops in uptake below the 95% World Health Organisation target can erode the collective benefit of vaccination and create the potential for more outbreaks, such as the measles outbreaks in recent years. In Oxfordshire, where my constituency is located, we are below the target for all five of the main early years vaccination categories. For four of the five, we are in the 85% to 95% range, and for the pre-school booster for tetanus, diphtheria and polio, we are in the 90% to 95% range. The figures are too low and really need to be improved. The hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip set out articulately the sort of coherent and integrated NHS and Government plan that we need to tackle this issue; I will focus on the challenges of misinformation and disinformation. We need a proactive NHS and Government plan, because spending on vaccination is a really good illustration of the principle that prevention is better than subsequent treatment and hospitalisation. Improving our vaccination rates is a really good way of relieving pressure on other parts of the health service, and saving money from up-front investment as well as saving lives. Vaccination is one of many areas of health where individual decisions can cause harm to a wider community. There will be plenty of parents and people who might have concerns about vaccination, whether legitimate or because of things they have seen on social media, but as far as possible—we had a lot of debate about this during the covid pandemic—we must try to think not just of ourselves and our families, but of our neighbours, friends and work colleagues when making decisions about vaccination. We know that misinformation and disinformation are both rising, and that has been made easier, alas, by social media. Sustained action will be needed to tackle that. We definitely need tougher regulation of social media companies. We perhaps may need to introduce a verification requirement for any social media account claiming to be that of a medical professional. I would like to see the compulsory labelling and annotation of all posts about vaccination and vaccines with verified scientific facts by the relevant public health or national body. We need to show leadership as politicians. Perhaps the Government could consider taking the lead on a national campaign in which we all show our support for vaccinations, maybe even sometimes when we take them. As adults, we do not need them quite so often, but we might for certain types of travel—because of my love of walking in the Alps, I have occasionally chosen to have a tick-borne encephalitis vaccine to reduce my risk of infection. We can all do a lot more, be symbols of progress and practise what we preach, as many politicians do for blood donation, for example. Perhaps the new Prime Minister could make one of his famous TikTok videos videos—although, of course, he has a long list of topics to tackle. We can also engage with social media influencers, who have the credibility on social media that those of us who are hopeless at it lack. They can be ambassadors for vaccination as well. As the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip said, we need community outreach programmes. We need the health service to be properly supported, because this is yet another thing to add to the long list of things we expect of GPs. We need to go to the people and reach areas and communities that perhaps do not have as much access to or interaction with the health service as others. We need to build dialogue and trust. We need to create easy-to-access and visible vaccination opportunities, including at times of the day convenient for those communities, not just for health and medical organisations. Only teamwork and determined action can avert us from our current path of falling vaccination rates. If we do not reverse the trend, we will, alas, see more illness and, ultimately, death. I hope to hear from the Minister what we can do to prevent that.

Order. I need to impose a time limit of three minutes.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker, and I thank the Health and Social Care Committee for its work. It is a real privilege to be able to access vaccine programmes. They are the most effective public health interventions, and there are 15 vaccine-preventable infections against which we can be inoculated. Just this week, the winter flu vaccination programme started; I urge all those watching to take up the opportunity to protect themselves and their community. In York, take-up is relatively high; however, we are not complacent. A particular challenge for us is the uptake of the second MMR vaccine. I would like to know what the Government are doing to support initiatives to improve that. York’s uptake is 86.2% against Yorkshire’s 85% and England’s average of 83.8%, but the World Health Organisation sets the ambition at 95% because that is the level for herd immunity, which will keep our communities safe. When will that target be reintroduced? It must be reintroduced, because we know that it is effective. There are lessons we can learn about how to deliver vaccinations more effectively. If we think back to covid, many people—communities, schools and faith and community groups—were involved in getting the message out. We need to be able to communicate better to our communities, in this day of information overload, the importance of vaccines. Vaccine delivery mechanisms also need to be expanded—we have heard many examples today, such as health visitors visiting family hubs for the early years, the schools programme, and the places where people connect, including workplaces and elsewhere. We need to ensure that we have a comprehensive system. I call on the Minister to look at the technology available to her to identify areas of low take-up. We know it is low in areas of deprivation and where ethnic minority groups, who are more hesitant to take up the vaccine, are concentrated. I ask that we have a proper, comprehensive vaccine passport that can be used by all clinicians who deliver the vaccine programme. I also ask the Minister to look at the issue of hesitancy in the round. We know that a small number of children, parents, carers and adults are hesitant about taking up vaccines. Sometimes that is about information, but sometimes it is simply a fear of needles. Can we look at different delivery mechanisms for vaccines so that people and communities are protected?

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I congratulate the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) on securing this important debate. It seems that every time I open my social media feed or emails, I am being sold some supplement or superfood to boost my immunity. We know that the most effective way of boosting our immunity is vaccination. Vaccines can achieve something even more extraordinary: they can actually eradicate diseases from the face of the earth. During the 20th century alone, we lost hundreds of millions of people to smallpox until it was eradicated in 1977. Rinderpest, a cattle disease, was wiped off the face of the Earth by vaccination—the second disease to be removed from our planet. Polio is on the brink of eradication. I recently spoke at a Winchester rotary event about polio eradication, organised by two of my constituents, Gillian Russell and Professor Kordo Saeed, both of whom contracted polio when they were children and have lifelong disabilities as a result. It is important to remind everyone that this is about preventing not just deaths, but disability and ill health that can last a lifetime. We saw the power of vaccination during the covid-19 pandemic. A century earlier, during the 1918 influenza outbreak, which killed 50 million people, there were no flu vaccines or antiviral treatments. There were not even antibiotics to treat the secondary infections. During covid, we initially had only the same blunt tools—isolation and restriction on gatherings—to try to control the disease, but then the vaccine came out. It saved a huge number of lives and gave us a route out of lockdown. We got back to seeing our families, socialising, going back to work, running our businesses and just living our lives. But there is a danger that vaccines can become a victim of their own success. We have become so unfamiliar with some diseases that we have forgotten how serious they really are. That is why falling childhood vaccination rates should particularly concern us. When politicians like Donald Trump and parties such as Reform platform anti-vaxxers, parents rightly become worried. They all want to do the best for their children, but when dangerous, provocative and downright false information is platformed, the truth is pushed further and further away from those looking for answers. Centuries ago, hospitals were filled with iron lungs for children with polio, and graveyards were filled with children under five years old who died from entirely preventable diseases. Vaccines have saved more lives than any other medical intervention in history. They are the closest thing that we have to a safety blanket from disease, and we must not allow dangerous and divisive figures online or in politics to drive people away from science and evidence-led healthcare. Science produces solutions, answers and evidence, but politicians and politics can determine whether they are trusted.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) and colleagues on the Health and Social Care Committee for securing this important debate. I am particularly concerned about the fall in childhood vaccination rates and what that means for diseases such as measles, which we had all but eliminated. Before I entered Parliament, I served as a councillor on the North West London integrated care board. Because our figures were so poor, I pushed for North West London NHS to deliver MMR vaccinations through community pharmacies. All families go to pharmacies, so it seemed an obvious thing to do, but I was told that it was simply too complicated. I pushed a bit, and I got two pharmacies into a sort of project. It was a start, but it was nowhere near enough. When I became a member of the Health and Social Care Committee, then, I was delighted to have the opportunity to pursue the matter. As has been mentioned, when NHS England and UK Health Security Agency officials came before the Committee in February, warning signs were already flashing red. The UK had lost its measles elimination status, London had the lowest childhood vaccination coverage in the country, and children were being hospitalised by a disease that is entirely preventable. It was extraordinary: I was strongly struck by the feeling they gave off of a complete lack of urgency in how they saw the problem. I asked whether anyone had assessed the cost to the NHS of under-vaccination; the answer was no. I asked why a pharmacy MMR pilot across 43 sites in the north-west had not continued; I was told that it had worked as a campaign, but making it routine was “a different question”. I asked whether that question was even being assessed, and it clearly was not. Sadly, since the Committee’s inquiry the situation has got worse, not better. As my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip touched on, UKHSA data shows that, as of 17 August, England had recorded 970 laboratory-confirmed measles cases this year alone. Of those, 650 patients were children aged 14 or under, and more than half of all cases were in London. I am not saying that pharmacies are silver bullets—the Committee also heard arguments about strengthening school-age immunisation services—but it should not be either/or. It should be schools, GPs and pharmacies. We should use every available route to help our children and their families. Officials told the Committee that they do not want to use pharmacies for childhood vaccination because they still do not know whether the evidence supports it. Surely, Minister, the obvious answer is to get the evidence. What are the Government doing to get the evidence? Will they get it by commissioning a proper evaluation of the use of pharmacies for routine MMR vaccination, with a clear deadline? In short, will the Minister ensure that the NHS stops prevaricating and acts before more children pay the price?

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker—you are certainly earning your money, because you were here yesterday and are back again today. I congratulate the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) on introducing this debate, and I thank him for setting the scene incredibly well. As the Democratic Unionist party’s spokesperson on health, I am particularly interested in this topic and how it affects those in Northern Ireland. It is good to see the Minister in her place again, and I wish her well in her role. I know that her answers will encourage us—no pressure! Vaccines have saved millions of lives, protecting our children from serious illnesses and life-changing complications. However, over the last decade, vaccination uptake has declined across the United Kingdom. In 2021, data showed that none of the routine childhood vaccinations had reached the World Health Organisation’s recommended 95% coverage target. That trend reveals a significant risk to public health, which we have already seen with localised outbreaks of measles and whooping cough in areas across the United Kingdom. Research published in August also showed further falls in UK-wide uptake among 12-month-old children of vaccines including pneumococcal conjugate, rotavirus and MenB. If vaccines are not done, it can lead to serious illnesses including pneumonia, meningitis and other life-threatening infections. I will briefly comment on Northern Ireland, and then I have some asks of the Minister. In Northern Ireland, for children aged 24 months, coverage was above 84% for all reported vaccines. In 2024, the Department of Health warned that a measles outbreak was likely unless urgent action was taken to increase MMR vaccine uptake in Northern Ireland. New parents must have access to clear, accurate and reassuring information that addresses uncertainty and maintains confidence in the safety of these vaccines. However, my biggest concern is related to practical barriers, which I want to ask about. Research from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has emphasised that vaccine confidence remains generally high across the UK, while practical issues in accessing vaccination services are far more likely to contribute to declining uptake. Practical barriers are largely faced by those living in deprived areas, for example, or those living in rural areas who do not have access to transport. Can the Minister comment on those who are prevented from accessing vaccines by lack of transport? Will she have discussions with the relevant Minister in the Northern Ireland Executive on vaccination uptake in Northern Ireland? We must get the correct messaging across social media and into schools with a non-condescending approach. Vaccination is in all of our best interests, but an educational approach must be the way forward. With great respect, this should not be a stick with which to beat parents who believe they are doing the best for their children.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I thank the members of the Health and Social Care Committee for securing this debate. Doctors like me do not need any convincing about vaccination, but some of our political opponents do not agree. It is incredible to think that a platform was given at last year’s Reform conference to someone claiming that vaccinations had caused cancer in the royal family, and that the head of the United States Health Department is a vaccine sceptic. That is quite pernicious and wrong—very, very wrong. Doctors like me do not need convincing. Nor do wives like mine who are Rhesus-negative and whose mothers had multiple miscarriages before the discovery of anti-D injections to prevent baby loss, which was first tested in the famous Sing Sing prison experiments. When I was young, every county had a school for the deaf, but they had all closed by the time I was a senior ENT surgeon. Why was that? Maternal rubella, or German measles, in pregnancy had been abolished by simply vaccinating all girls at puberty, just like that—brilliant. There was no longer a need for so many schools for the deaf. A landmark 2026 Lancet study reported no cervical cancer deaths among women aged 20 to 24 between 2020 and 2024: a dramatic drop from the previous five-year period directly credited to the national human papillomavirus vaccination programme. We will see the same fall in the number of deaths from oropharyngeal throat cancer in boys as a result of HPV vaccination. We all know that the national response to the pandemic was not a glorious one. There were costly errors in personal protective equipment and test and trace, but the one thing we did get right was vaccination, which saved countless lives. I recall myself vaccinating the first very elderly patients in Great Yarmouth. Just lately we have seen reports of increased life expectancy in patients with malignant melanoma due to personalised cancer vaccines—brilliant. Doctors like me, unlike some politicians, need no convincing of the crucial importance of vaccination, but there must be a warning here, for we are short of clinical academics who lead medical education and research. We need to incubate the next generation of scientists who will lead these discoveries, for this is the country of Jenner, who discovered vaccination; of Lister, who discovered antisepsis; and of Fleming, who discovered penicillin. We have a great legacy, and we must secure a great future.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) for securing this important debate. Over the last 15 years, childhood vaccination rates have fallen across Britain. The uptake of vaccinations for those aged under five is well below the World Health Organisation’s 95% target. The paradox of vaccination is that it has become a victim of its own success. It has protected us so effectively for so long that we can forget what it has saved us from. My grandma’s friend died from diphtheria at the age of 12. When I worked in public health, I met a lady whose mum had rubella during pregnancy, as a result of which that lady had serious impairments. Online misinformation is often put forward as the root driver of our falling vaccination rates. It is certainly true that false claims are dangerously contagious, but any explanation that focuses only on anti-vaxxers and the often-monetised pedlars of misinformation and disinformation risks mistaking the loudest part of the problem for the largest part of the problem. Most parents who miss vaccinations are simply exhausted, overstretched or unable to get an appointment that fits around their lives. Anyone who has experienced the first few months of a baby’s life knows exactly what it is like, but at any time of life, when clinics require long journeys on public transport or time off work, missed vaccination is more often due to practical barriers than to any ideological opposition. Although vaccination in this country might be free, accessing it is not always without cost. How do we fix it? First, we need to rebuild health visiting and early years services, as well as rebuilding the links between families and GPs, because vaccination rates are highest when people have access to trusted professionals who they see regularly. I certainly know that health visiting is in a much worse place than when I had my first child. The investment that this Labour Government are putting into our health services should address that, but I was interested to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip talk about the fragmented and confusing pathways, which I think are still there, and about his concrete suggested actions. I would like to hear the Minister’s response. Finally, I do not want us to forget how poverty and deprivation affect vaccination uptake rates. When someone is worried about making the rent, topping up the electric meter or putting food on the table, routine health admin can fall down the list. All the action we are taking through the child poverty strategy, lifting the two-child benefit limit and free breakfast clubs will have a good impact. I will use my final seconds to pay tribute to an absolute vaccine legend. Dolly Parton gave $1 million to the development of the Moderna vaccine. Not only that, she did so much to encourage the uptake of the covid vaccine. I think we will all miss her.

It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Mrs Barker. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) for securing the debate. I am the parent of two children who had plenty of vaccinations. One of them took it in her stride and the other made the biggest drama in the history of medicine, so I can appreciate why so many parents approach this topic with trepidation. Before this debate, my team and I spoke to staff working in the Cannock North primary care network, which covers seven practices in the most deprived part of my constituency, about their efforts to improve lagging vaccination rates. They told me that rates are quite good for young babies, but they start to fall off as children get older, so they are looking at how they can step in earlier. They have produced plain and simple leaflets that explain the symptoms that a child might experience if they are not vaccinated. Staff will still hear parents say, “Well, I wasn’t vaccinated against it,” or “I’ve never even heard of polio,” so they are tackling the false assumption that choosing not to vaccinate is safe. They are also looking at a simple sticker system for the red book as a quick visual reminder of the schedule. Relationships with health practitioners can also be vital, as we have heard. The PCN suggested that trained health visitors could provide early immunisation, which I know is being trialled in other parts of England. The more hurdles we can remove, the better. That brings me to neighbourhood health centres, where services could be joined up and accessible. I agree with the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent ICB and NHS Property Services that Cannock and Rugeley would both be prime spots for centres. We know that vaccination programmes delivered strictly through GP practices see up to 27% lower uptake in deprived areas, whereas accessible pharmacy, community and neighbourhood programmes narrow that gap to as little as 7%. The lesson I took from speaking to the Cannock North PCN team is that improving vaccination rates does not necessarily require one huge intervention. Finally, I would like to finish by raising a funding issue with the Minister. Since funding for childhood immunisations moved to the quality and outcomes framework, practices receive the funding only if they meet the 96% target. In a deprived area with a significant Traveller community, like Chadsmoor, that can be incredibly difficult. Practices can spend significant time and money contacting families but still find themselves falling well short. For example, a practice could move from 70% to 80% after a huge effort but still receive no funding. I ask the Minister whether QOF could recognise progress in closing health inequalities, rather than just rewarding in-built advantage. Clearly, the route to achieving high vaccination rates will look a bit different in every community. The practices I have spoken to are doing brilliant work despite funding disadvantages, and I wonder whether we could see outstanding outcomes in Cannock Chase and right across the country if we put rocket boosters under the innovation that we already see right across primary care.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) and for Worthing West (Dr Cooper) and the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for securing this debate on such an important issue. I will attempt to talk about three different vaccinations in less than three minutes, but before I do that, I would like to say a huge thank you to Congleton Rotary, which recently raised over £1,000 towards polio vaccination. That is such an important topic. First, it is completely unacceptable that the UK lost its measles-free status this year. We know that it can be a devastating disease for anyone who is unvaccinated, but it is especially dangerous for babies, young people, pregnant women and anyone with a weakened immune system. We have relied on herd immunity for a very long time, and we no longer have the percentage required to have that. During the last major outbreak in central and eastern Cheshire, nearly a quarter of the cases were in the under-ones. Our babies depend on the rest of us having vaccinations, because otherwise they are profoundly vulnerable. We must work to get that rate back up again. Only 90% of children in Cheshire East had received both doses of the MMR vaccine by their fifth birthday. We must work harder on that, and I would welcome any progress that the Government can bring, including by addressing the legacy of missed appointments during the covid pandemic. The second vaccination that I want to talk about is cervical cancer. Every year, 3,300 women are still being diagnosed despite the take-up of the HPV vaccine among younger women, and around 685 women a year are losing their lives to the disease. The recent study mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Dr Prinsley) shows that the risk of cervical cancer death before the age of 30 has effectively reduced to zero—the HPV vaccine is amazing. Our goal as a Government is to eliminate cervical cancer by 2040, which would be fantastic, and we have a 90% target vaccination rate for girls. In Cheshire East, the vaccination rate at the moment is 77.4% of girls but only 72% of boys. For some reason, we do not have a target for boys, but boys are also vulnerable to the equivalent cancers, and they absolutely need and deserve the same protection as girls. Why are we not making sure that they also have these targets? Lady Garden Foundation research found that over 45% of eligible girls who missed their school HPV vaccination did so because a consent form was not returned. Active parental refusal apparently accounts for just 12% of the failure rate. As a parent, I do not want vaccination to be forced on anybody, of course, but lifetime consent would make life so much easier. Why am I being asked every single time? Unless a child’s health status has changed, there is really no reason to withdraw vaccination consent. I believe we could make that much easier. Lastly, Cheshire has so many people in hospital with flu each year, so I remind everybody of the importance of vaccinating children against flu, to protect both them and their elderly relatives over Christmas. I thank the Minister and the Health and Social Care Committee, and I hope we can move this forward.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. Over the summer, I had the pleasure of visiting Kingsbury Court surgery to find out about its big push on childhood vaccination. I met Dr Abdullah Khan, who told me that, like others, he was really worried about the return of measles, which he thought created an urgent need for action. He saw the outbreak in Enfield as a real warning shot and talked about the UK losing its WHO measles elimination status. Dr Khan told me his surgery had decided it needed a new approach—it is fairly similar to what we have heard today—built around confidence and convenience. I was introduced to the senior nurse, Elena Costache, who showed me a display she had made to rebut some of the myths that parents are seeing online. She also explained how staff go online to dispel those myths in the comments made on the surgery’s own webpage, doing so respectfully but directly, and always in plain English. Everything the surgery staff told me was useful and informative, although I have to say that one bit made me feel rather ancient: they said that one issue was that many parents seemed to think that measles, mumps and things like that were from long, long ago. I still have a childhood book called “Alex’s mumps book”, with lots of fun activities to do while I was a bit under the weather. Those at the surgery also talked about convenience—staff going into nurseries, children’s centres and crèches—about the active outreach they do and about the crucial point of following up again and again on missed appointments. All this is working. They are doing about 140 vaccinations a month and, importantly, over the last year they got their childhood vaccination rate up by 9%, which is fantastic, although they still plan to go further. One specific issue staff raised with me was keeping up with vaccinations in an area with an awful lot of new build housing. Can the Minister comment on specific measures the Government are taking to ensure that people can stay up to date with their vaccinations during the upheaval of a house move? I also hope she can join me in congratulating Kingsbury Court GP surgery on what I think is a jab well done.

This is an incredibly important and timely debate. The latest UK Health Security Agency data, published on Tuesday, underlined how vaccine rates have continued to decline. It also showed that uptake of the meningitis B booster for children aged two fell slightly last year. I find that especially alarming, given the meningitis outbreak in Kent earlier this year. There were 21 confirmed cases, tragically including the deaths of two young people. A number of schools across east Kent also recorded confirmed cases, including one in my constituency. I am grateful for the co-ordinated action led by the various agencies. Their swift response helped to ensure that clear public health advice was communicated and that vaccination programmes could be rapidly rolled out. Although I warmly welcome that action, at the time of the outbreak I joined colleagues from across the House in calling for more to be done. I was therefore pleased that, during the summer, the UKHSA and NHS England introduced a one-off national meningitis B vaccination programme to protect young people at the highest risk before the start of the new academic year, when meningitis B cases typically rise. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation also published a number of recommendations on a routine meningitis B programme for adolescents. Before the summer recess, the Government were considering those recommendations. Will the Minister provide an update on those considerations? The meningitis outbreak in Kent should serve as a warning of the serious consequences when vaccine-preventable diseases regain ground. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for global tuberculosis, I also point to rising rates of TB in the UK. TB meningitis is one of the most severe forms of TB, particularly in young children. The BCG vaccine protects against TB, particularly serious forms of the infection such as TB meningitis. However, the latest data for the UK shows that, in the first quarter of the year, almost one in five children eligible for the BCG vaccine did not receive it. Vaccinations remain an important part of preventing severe childhood TB, alongside early diagnosis and treatment. However, the BCG vaccine is more than 100 years old and does not provide reliable protection against pulmonary TB in adults. I therefore stress the need for continued investment in research and development on new, more effective TB vaccines. That is particularly important, given the country’s role in global tuberculosis research and development. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Dr Prinsley) talked about Reform using its conference stage to talk about an anti-vaccination programme. We have a duty to base our discussions about vaccinations on facts and evidence. As politicians, we have a particular responsibility to promote clear, evidence-based information and to avoid contributing to uncertainty and mistrust.

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I thank my Health and Social Care Committee colleagues for bringing forward this debate. One thing we learned during the pandemic was just how much we all rely on each other. Vaccines were a huge part of helping us get back to seeing our families and taking part in our communities. We got through that period because we recognised that looking after each other meant looking after ourselves. At the same time, we saw a growth of misinformation online. Many of us spent more time online during the pandemic and, too often, social media algorithms pushed people towards content that reinforces fear rather than answers questions. There is a fundamental problem with misinformation, which is that science is evolving and lives in the grey area; it is much easier to be wrong with certainty. Diseases that once killed and disabled huge swathes of our population have been brought under control because of generations of vaccines. That is something we should never take for granted. Vaccines do not cause autism; they cause healthy children. Yet we are seeing a worrying decline in the uptake of vaccines, which is the reason for this debate. In England, less than 84% of children have received both doses of the MMR vaccine, well below the 95% target that gives us the best protection. The consequences are not theoretical—we are experiencing them now. The growth of misinformation and the anti-vax movement puts children’s lives at risk. The majority of measles cases since the start of this year—61%—have been in children under 10. Most of those children were unvaccinated. Tragically, two children have died—of a preventable disease for which there is a safe and effective vaccine. That is two families suffering an unimaginable loss. The irony with vaccines is that the lives saved never make the headlines—the children who do not get sick, the hospital admissions we do not have. The families who never experience that terrible loss will never know that it was vaccines that spared them from it. At the core of this debate are trust and responsibility. The Government have a responsibility to champion the benefits of vaccines and to set out a clear path to 95%. We have a responsibility to take up those vaccines, but the Government must act. If social media companies do not stop the harmful content we have talked about, we must act to make sure they do. I once again thank my fellow Health and Social Care Committee members for bringing forward this debate. We need to make sure we have a clear plan and clear action so that we can solve this problem.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship this afternoon, Mrs Barker. I commend the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) on setting out the work that the Health and Social Care Committee has done, and all its members on looking into this vital issue. Not so long ago, hospitals in this country were filled with rows of iron lungs ventilating children paralysed by polio, and schools were forced to close their doors as measles swept through entire classrooms, leaving some children permanently disabled, and some parents burying their children. We do not see those scenes today, and that is because of one the single greatest achievements in the history of medicine: vaccination. In 2026, it is easy to forget that and to take for granted a world in which parents do not fear that a common childhood illness might kill their child. However, we are at risk of forgetting the lessons our grandparents learned the hard way, and the numbers prove it. In England, just 81% of five-year-olds have received their 4-in-1 jab against diseases such as polio and tetanus, down from 89% a decade ago, and only 84% have had both their MMR jabs, down from 88%. No childhood vaccine in this country now meets the 95% coverage threshold the World Health Organisation tells us we need in order to keep these diseases from spreading—and they are spreading. Over 800 cases of measles have already been confirmed this year, closing in on the total for the whole of last year. Vaccine take-up is not evenly spread across our country either. In London, MMR coverage is just 72%, but in the south-west it is 83%—an 11 point gap mapped on to deprivation, inequalities and communities that already find it hardest to access the healthcare they need. It is not just children: only 70% of over-65s and 42% of pregnant women received a flu vaccine this past season, both figures well short of where they need to be. Last year gave us one of the worst flu seasons in memory. As the hon. Member for Ashford (Sojan Joseph) noted, the tragedy we saw with the Kent meningitis outbreak earlier this year led to a change in policy on vaccination for meningitis, and we saw that there was the capacity for authorities to do more and to take action. As a mum to a teen who has been called for a meningitis vaccination this summer, I am hugely grateful for that change in policy. That action tells us something important: that when we make vaccination easier to access, uptake follows, and that this is not a lost cause but a policy failure, and policy failures can be fixed. There is also a darker force at work, and we must be honest about it. Online medical disinformation is a genuine threat to public health, and it is increasingly being given a platform by people who should know better. Reform has refused to condemn Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories linking vaccines to autism. As was noted by the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Dr Prinsley), at Reform UK’s conference last year a keynote speaker blamed vaccines for cancer in the royal family. We have seen in the United States exactly where this leads: trusted scientific institutions hollowed out, and the health of a nation put at risk. Doctors and nurses in our own GP surgeries and walk-in centres are now telling us that they are hearing these same conspiracy theories in this country today. We must listen to scientists, not conspiracy theorists, and politicians who lend credibility to dangerous medical falsehoods must be held to account for the harm they cause. What can we do about it? First, we can invest properly, and for the long term, in our vaccination programmes. This cannot keep being treated as a cost-neutral afterthought. NHS England’s strategy exists on paper, but everyone—from clinicians to campaigners—agrees that it lacks the funding and senior leadership to actually turn things around. Secondly, we can take vaccination to where people already are. Community spaces and the places people trust should be central to how we deliver an ambitious new push for record vaccination rates. That is particularly true among the communities that we too often write off as hard to reach. Thirdly, we need a serious, funded strategy to fight medical disinformation head on—not one or two well-meaning social media videos, but a real strategy. That means supporting doctors and nurses with the tools and training to engage constructively with vaccine-sceptical patients; investing in public health messaging that works with trusted local voices and online influencers, not against them; targeted outreach to the communities where scepticism runs deepest; criminal liability for online influencers and politicians alike who profit from spreading dangerous medical disinformation; and a new verification system so that no one can falsely claim to be a medical professional online. None of that is about shaming families who have been misled. It is about meeting them where they are, with facts, compassion and a system that makes doing the right thing the easy thing. We owe it to every family who lived through the era of iron lungs and empty classrooms not to let their hard-won progress slip away on our watch. Let us fund vaccination properly, let us take it into every community and let us have the courage to say clearly and without apology that we follow the science, not the conspiracy theories.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mrs Barker. I congratulate the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) on securing this important debate. Why do we vaccinate? As we have heard today, we vaccinate because it prevents illness, it reduces the severity of illnesses that do occur, and it reduces complications. I should declare an interest as a consultant paediatrician in the NHS, as a parent of three children between 11 and 19 and as someone who was a volunteer vaccinator for many months at the local vaccine centre during the covid-19 pandemic. Vaccines were first identified, or discovered, by Edward Jenner in 1796. He discovered the smallpox vaccine, which eliminated smallpox completely between 1958 and 1977. We have seen that happen with so many diseases. I have a list, but it is so long that I am not sure I have time to read it all out: diphtheria, tetanus, polio, haemophilus influenzae, pertussis, rotavirus, hepatitis B, tuberculosis, flu, respiratory syncytial virus, shingles, human papillomavirus, various strains of meningitis, rubella, mumps, coronavirus—I could go on. There are so many different things to which we now have vaccines that we did not have previously and that have reduced the incidence of death and serious illness in so many people. It is almost impossible to quantify how many lives have been saved. I want to focus on measles, which several hon. Members have mentioned. My great-uncle Leonard died of measles at the age of 15 months. Pre-vaccine, it was a common condition that killed many people. Thankfully, now it is not—and why? Because of vaccines. Vaccination rates have fallen, however, and we have lost our measles-free status. We need to make sure, as far as possible, that everyone gets the vaccine. The concept of herd immunity means that if some children cannot be vaccinated because of a personal health condition, they will be protected to an extent by the fact of a large proportion of the population having been vaccinated, and by the reduction of that disease within the community in some conditions. If vaccination rates fall, there is a risk to those people, as well as to those who have just decided not to have the vaccine. I would be interested to know how the Minister will focus on measles in particular. When we were in office, the Conservatives modernised the routine vaccination programme. In 2015, the UK became the first country to offer the Bexsero vaccine against meningitis B, which was given to babies aged eight to 16 weeks, followed by a booster around their first birthday. In 2017, we also switched to the hexavalent six-in-one routine vaccine programme so that babies could be protected against hepatitis B for the first time. Conservative Ministers expanded the HPV vaccination to boys, bringing the UK in line with other developed countries and preventing approximately 30,000 cases of cancer in males. The vaccine taskforce secured seven vaccines for the UK during the coronavirus pandemic, invested over £400 million in scaling up domestic manufacturing and mobilised more than 100,000 volunteers with sites right across the country. We also backed the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine with public funding and agreed a 10-year partnership with Moderna to invest in mRNA research and development. The previous Government supported vaccination in a number of ways; I look forward to hearing from the Minister what her Government will do to support it. I also want to talk about meningitis B, which is a horrible, rapid disease that affects patients very quickly. It is one of the diseases that is quite frightening to see as a paediatrician because of the speed at which a child goes from being well to being critically ill. We have all heard about putting the glass across the rash to see whether it disappears, but I have watched that rash appear on children with lightning speed. The disease kills, and it leaves many children with severe, lifelong disabilities. In 2015, the UK was first in the world to bring in a vaccine against meningitis for small children, but last year we saw meningitis B infections in groups of older children and young adults in Kent, Dorset and Reading. There were 21 cases in Kent and two deaths. The Government quickly brought in a local vaccine programme to treat people who might have been at risk, but there was also a stampede for private provision; Boots, Superdrug and other commercial ventures ran out of the vaccine within a few hours. The Government have decided to bring in a system under which people born between 1 September 2007 and 31 August 2008, and those who are starting university or further education colleges for the first time this year, will be able to get the vaccine. However, the JCVI has suggested that children who have been vaccinated with one dose should be given a booster at age 15. That means those who were born after 1 May 2015, so the Minister has a little while to manage that, but the JCVI has also recommended two doses for adolescents who did not get the first dose. The Government do not seem to have taken up that recommendation yet. Will they do so? When? A meningitis vaccine has also been brought in for men who have sex with men because, interestingly, it also has a 42% protective rate for gonococcal conditions. There was a record high of 85,000 cases in 2023. The vaccine has helped with those cases, but it would be beneficial to know when the Government will ensure that all our young children have the protection that they need against this frightening disease. Other things are slipping, too. The flu vaccination is highly effective at reducing seasonal hospital admissions. The WHO recognises that it is the most effective way to prevent infection and severe outcomes from flu, but coverage among the elderly and at-risk groups has declined in England. I would be interested to hear why the Minister thinks that is, what her research shows and what she is going to do about it. Respiratory syncytial virus affects not just children, but the elderly. The vaccine is incredibly effective in the elderly; last year, the JCVI recommended its extension to the over-80s. At the time, I asked Ministers whether the vaccine, having been recommended by the JCVI in the early summer, would be ready for last winter. My understanding, from what was said, was that they were going to work at pace. They reassured me that it would happen, but it did not. I believe that the vaccine will be available to older people this winter, but what is the Minister doing to make sure that they are aware of that so that they take it up? It will help to reduce admissions to hospital over the winter and reduce the pressure on A&Es and ambulance services, and it will mean that people are less unwell, which is obviously a good thing. Many hon. Members have talked about vaccine hesitancy. Polling by Ipsos found that more than two thirds of adults believed that it was “difficult for the public to spot misleading health information.” It also found that those in the most deprived areas were more likely to be affected. According to a UK Health Security Agency survey, last year 47% of parents who reported seeing concerning information about vaccines said that they had seen it on social media. As hon. Members have said, those sorts of message, such as the suggestion that cancer in the royal family was caused by vaccines, were platformed by a political party at a conference. It is important that we give responsible information about vaccines that we know to be true. We do not pretend that there are no risks. There is always a small risk to anything: we take a risk when we get up in the morning and come to work, and we take a risk every time we cross the road. Every aspect of our life contains risk, but we need to be honest with people and explain that the risks of vaccines are tiny and the risks of the disease are potentially much greater. That will mean that people can make informed decisions. When patients who have not been vaccinated come to clinic—we check with all children whether they have been vaccinated when they come for their first clinical appointment—they have very often refused once and not been asked again. The reason why has not been discussed. No one has asked them why they are worried about the vaccine; it has just been accepted at face value. Very often, when we talk to parents about it, they will then have their children vaccinated. We need to make sure that when unvaccinated children do present to medical services, we take the opportunity to try to get them vaccinated. I welcome the addition to the relationships, sex and health education curriculum of facts about vaccination and immunisation, but what is happening to provide public information to parents and other adults? It is said that vaccine uptake among ethnic minority groups is markedly lower. Does the Minister understand why? What is she doing to improve it? The Prime Minister has previously attested that Healthwatch is a key factor in engaging marginalised communities, but this Labour Government have placed it on the chopping block in the Health Bill, which is due back in the House next week. How does the Minister foresee that role being taken up by the patient experience body with which the Government intend to replace it? From April next year, integrated care boards instead of NHS England will be responsible for vaccinations. I understand that that is part of the Minister’s strategic commissioning vision, but will that additional responsibility be met with additional resources? How will the Government ensure that it does not cause further slippage in vaccinations? Finally, I want to mention the life sciences industry, which is struggling under this Government’s tax burden. Now that the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has been abolished, what will the Minister do to ensure that the industry is given the support that it needs? Occasionally during my career, a parent of a critically ill child has looked me in the eye, often as the child is being put in an ambulance to an intensive care unit, and said, “If I’d given my child the vaccine, they wouldn’t be this ill, would they, Doctor?” There is trauma and grief for those parents, and a regret that is completely unnecessary and can be prevented. It is in the hands of the Minister and of this Government to do what they can to prevent it. I look forward to hearing what the Minister plans to do.

It is a pleasure to serve under you today, Mrs Barker. I am grateful to the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), and its members for securing this important debate and am grateful to all hon. Members who have spoken this afternoon. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) for his passionate opening statement. I also welcome the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), back to her place after the reshuffle; I congratulate her on surviving for so long. I know that Members across the House are very concerned about this issue. I have been struck by the knowledge and expertise around the Chamber this afternoon. Many questions have been posed. If I do not get to every question that Members have asked, I will write to them with an answer. After clean water, vaccination is the most effective public health intervention for saving lives and promoting good health. It protects individuals, protects families and protects communities. One vaccination can change the whole course of a life for the better or, if it is missed, for the worse. I am very conscious of that as a Hull MP, because in October 1961 we were the first city to mass-vaccinate with the new oral vaccine. When we faced a polio outbreak that threatened the city, over 350,000 people were vaccinated in two weeks. That led to the national roll-out soon afterwards, helping to virtually eliminate the disease nationwide. Over generations, vaccinations have made diseases that once killed or disabled thousands of children rare and have eradicated smallpox worldwide. Vaccination is central to this Government’s wider shift from sickness to prevention. In terms of the diseases we protect against, we deliver at the moment what I still believe is a world-class vaccination programme, backed by expert advice from the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. But the benefits depend on high uptake, and childhood vaccination rates have moved in the wrong direction. Falling vaccination rates are a very serious challenge. Despite our programme achieving more than 90% coverage for babies’ first doses against diseases such as polio and measles, we are not hitting our targets. There is no single cause and there is no quick fix. We know that some families struggle to get an appointment that works for them or have not received clear, trusted information in a way that works for them. Services also vary across the country. The pandemic put further pressures on the health system and misinformation can add to these problems. [Sir Desmond Swayne in the Chair] We are therefore acting on four fronts: clearer NHS organisation, more flexible services, better public information and joined-up digital records. I will deal with each in turn, but first I will address targets, as well as funding and delegation to ICBs. Let us be clear: the Government have not dropped vaccination targets. To summarise, our targets are 95% for routine pre-school immunisations and 90% for routine school-age immunisations. Our targets remain in force and are based on standards set by the World Health Organisation. We have simplified the NHS planning guidance to avoid duplication, but we did not lower our ambition. We are also backing targets with better accountability. Coverage of MMR vaccinations for young children will form part of how the performance of NHS ICBs will be assessed as they take on responsibility for vaccination services from April next year. We have not cut funding for vaccination services. We have confirmed funding for the next three years, giving the NHS certainty as responsibility moves from the NHS regions to ICBs in April 2027. Excluding covid-19 vaccinations, that is a real-terms increase and will help ICBs and vaccination service providers to plan service improvements further ahead. On delegation, ICBs are best placed to improve vaccination coverage because they understand the needs of their local communities. That matters because the reasons for low coverage vary from place to place. ICBs can shape these services around local needs and barriers, whether that means more convenient appointments or clearer information from trusted sources. This is devolution in action. I reassure hon. Members that national bodies will continue to set standards, monitor performance and hold the system to account.

Will the Minister give way?

I will carry on because I have very limited time, but I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman or talk to him afterwards. I know there are concerns about the cuts that have been made to ICB running costs. These are planned reductions that relate just to administration, not the funding that will be used to provide frontline vaccination services. Turning to pre-school access, flexible services are critical. Vaccination rates are lowest in the most deprived communities, so improving uptake means making services easier to use. Pre-school children will continue to receive their vaccinations through their GPs. We have increased the payment to GPs for each routine childhood vaccination from £10.06 to £12.06 and changed the GP incentives to reward improvements where uptake is lowest. However, we recognise that GP services will not reach every family and are therefore testing vaccinations through health visiting teams, including through 12 pilots across England, four of which are in London. Health visitors have brought vaccines to family homes to ensure that the most vulnerable families are offered these lifesaving interventions. We have also been expanding the use of community pharmacies and are evaluating that. We are looking at supporting targeted local outreach as well. The aim is simple: to reach those who might otherwise miss out. School-age vaccinations are also a priority. The joint school-aged vaccination programme of work with my Department and the Department for Education is now overseeing actions to improve coverage in schools by resolving local delivery problems. The NHS is also rolling-out new digital technology to make it easier for busy parents to provide consent. It has published revised guidance for schools and the NHS and there are regional support forums to tackle any problems that are present. We also have the Mavis—manage vaccinations in schools—scheme. That is a new digital system that allows parents to give consent online and helps NHS teams to keep records up to date. By September 2026, it will be used by 72% of school vaccination teams, covering more than 13,800 schools, with further expansion planned for April ’27. Turning next to awareness, most parents want to do the right thing for their children. Our job is to ensure that they can easily find the clear and trustworthy information that they need. That means stronger public campaigns and confident healthcare professionals giving that advice. We think that it could also be provided by schools and better start hubs, as well as trusted local organisations. We all agree that false claims online can cause huge concern and worry. As a number of hon. Members have said, the actions of politicians have consequences. We all share the responsibility to base our comments on science and evidence. We have seen the damage that misinformation can cause. The entirely discredited and morally repugnant claims linking MMR and autism in the 1990s led to a substantial fall in coverage, so experts now monitor emerging misinformation and respond with accurate information. I hear the calls today for stronger action against social media companies, but we do not want to mistake misinformation for the whole problem. To improve coverage, many families simply need vaccinations to be easier to understand and to access. I will conclude with the issue of digital and data. We are improving vaccination records. At the moment, information is held in different NHS systems and does not always follow a patient between services. Through new digital systems, we are joining those records together. That will help healthcare professionals to see which vaccinations someone has had, allow the NHS to identify communities where uptake is low and give families clearer records, reminders and information about where to get vaccinated. Over time, families will also be able to access more of this through the NHS app. Vaccinations have protected generations from serious disease, and all of us have a vested interest in ensuring that they continue to do so. That means clear accountability, easier access, trusted information and better record keeping. As I have set out, we are acting on each of those fronts. Rebuilding coverage will take sustained effort, but we will monitor progress closely and take further action wherever it is needed. I note that the House of Lords Childhood Vaccinations Committee is due to report shortly. As the new Minister in this post, I will be looking very closely at the recommendations that come out of that report. I have had the chance to look at the letters that the Health and Social Care Committee wrote to one of my predecessors, and I can assure all hon. Members in the room today that I will go back to the Department and redouble my efforts to ensure that we see the increase that we all want in the number of vaccinations, particularly for children. I thank all hon. Members for their contributions this afternoon.

Thank you, Sir Desmond, for chairing the end of the debate, if not the beginning. I thank the Minister for her response. I and the rest of the Committee welcome her commitment to get back to us and to work with us. I just politely point out that the very good measures that she has outlined are measures that the Government and the strategy have been undertaking for many years, and we have still seen the decline continue. I encourage her to go back to her officials and press them for a timeline to regain elimination status and reach the WHO targets. If they are unwilling to put a target on that, I would suggest that perhaps they are not confident in the measures that they have so far been taking to achieve them, but I thank the Minister for her commitment to work with us. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered vaccination rates in England.