Supply of Blood and Blood Products

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

I am not sure that I agree with the reflections of my noble friend, although I do agree that we have a shortfall of some 200,000 donors to shore up and grow our blood supply. As I said, the situation remains fragile, which is why we need more support. We are constantly working to identify gaps and opportunities to strengthen and diversify the donor base through a donor base resilience programme, launched just this year. It is not just numbers; it is also the range of people, as we heard in earlier questions.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that during Covid we used non-traditional venues to encourage vaccination? I will give an example that we talk about a lot: football clubs. In Plymouth, that resulted in people who had never been able to see the football club go and get their vaccination. I believe that if we invested heavily in similar approaches, we would get many more young people giving blood. Will the Minister comment on that?

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is quite right. We have to go to where people are and not just expect them to come to us, and using a whole range of venues is important, as are mobile donation facilities. This is constantly kept under review: the service is constantly reviewing where the most successful places are and looking at new venues and new opportunities to take up.