Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment his Department has made of the case for the NHS vaccinating all teenagers for meningitis B.

The United Kingdom programme is aimed at protecting infants against meningococcal B infection as the incidence of disease is greatest in this age group. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which is the expert committee that advises the Government on vaccination and immunisation, has requested further research to reduce the uncertainty and provide a greater level of confidence on whether a vaccination programme for adolescents would be cost effective.

Specifically, the JCVI have requested a study of the effect of MenB vaccination on the carriage of meningococcal strains in adolescents. An open competition process has been carried out and completed to commission this work which the selected research team could potentially begin by the end of 2017.