Vaccinations

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

This year, what the officials call the “delivery model” is likely to be broadly similar to previous rollouts, with a similar mix of vaccination sites—mass vaccination centres, GP surgeries, pharmacies, hospital hubs, pop-ups et cetera—as well as NHS services. NHS England and NHS Improvement try to emphasise co-administration of Covid-19 vaccines with flu vaccines and other vaccines. At the same time, NHS England, NHS Improvement and MHRA are looking at current guidance to see how we can ensure that we encourage this more.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, my understanding is that uptake of the Covid vaccine has been much lower among some of the most marginalised communities, reflecting that hesitancy to which the Minister referred. In part, it would appear that this is because of a lack of trust in state institutions. I very much welcome what he said about the deployment of other agencies, but what are the Government doing to build that trust for the future?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Indeed, this is a really important point: the essential issue must be trust. As politicians in Westminster or officials in Whitehall, we must all have enough humility to recognise that we may not be able to cut through that. We have been looking at working with a number of different people in those communities and working out what the best message and channels will be. For example, we have spoken to faith leaders in some places. Even though some people may not be of a certain faith—they may be agonistic or atheist—they still respect faith leaders. In other places, we are looking at where people who are vaccine-hesitant go, and whether we can get the message—or even the vaccines—across to them.