Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of rising numbers of meningitis-B cases amongst the student population.

It has been a priority of this government to keep students in Higher Education as safe as possible during the COVID-19 outbreak and we have worked closely with the Department of Health and Social Care during this time. This continues as students return to the full programme of face-to-face teaching and learning that they received before the COVID-19 outbreak.

The government is aware of the risks of communicable diseases in settings such as Higher Education, where large numbers of people mix closely in confined environments. The United Kingdom Health Security Agency has published a toolkit for Higher Education providers on vaccine preventable infectious diseases: https://khub.net/documents/135939561/174090192/MMR+MenACWY+and+coronovirus+vaccine+comms+toolkit+for+universities.pdf/6ec4e100-242b-4f5c-f1ea-bf88cace1ecb.

This toolkit includes advice and links to free resources for providers to use with their students in order to protect their health and wellbeing, and it encourages students to be vaccinated against a range of infectious diseases, including meningitis, measles, mumps and COVID-19.