Polio

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Part of the public health message has been focused on making sure that people come forward, even before this was detected in the sewage works. One thing we saw as a result of lockdown was that some parents in some areas had not taken their young children to their doctor to have the vaccine. Let me be clear: at eight, 12 and 16 weeks, a child gets a 6-in-1 vaccine; at three years and four months, as part of the 4-in-1 preschool booster, they get it; and at 14 years they get one at school as a teenage booster. Some of those are pre school. We are encouraging people to check their red book, check their vaccination record and make sure they take their child in for their vaccine.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the paradoxes of ministerial Statements on issues such as this is that the more transparent Ministers are, the more the risk that it will create a sense of concern in the public. The history of public health problems over the past 50 years gives us the knowledge that the best way to deal with these issues is the maximum transparency at the most regular and immediate opportunities. That is the way ultimately to relieve concern and I recommend it to the Minister. On a specific issue, can the Minister give a little more detail on the decline in vaccinations throughout the country, particularly in London, during the Covid pandemic? I assume that the natural concern with vaccination for Covid led to a fairly substantial decline in vaccinations for other diseases. Can he give us a little more information on that?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

First, I thank the noble Lord for his recognition of one of the challenges of ministerial office, as he will know from his own experience. It is important that we recognise that vaccine-derived polio has the potential to spread, but it is rare and the risk to the public overall is limited. The majority of Londoners are fully protected against polio and will not need to take any more action, but the NHS will begin reaching out to parents of children under five in London who are not up to date. But we are asking for it both ways and for parents to check their records. Let us be clear that the UK is considered to be free from polio, but we recognise a potential risk given our world-leading surveillance of sewage.

On the noble Lord’s specific question, we are quite clear that people must come forward for all vaccines. Sometimes during lockdown people were unable to see a doctor or nurse in person, and the NHS is catching up with that anyway, but the NHS will keep sending the message to try to identify people who have not been vaccinated. At the same time, we are encouraging people to check their records. Let us be clear: we detected this very early in the chain, and it has perhaps come from someone who took an oral vaccine overseas and has excreted it into the system.