Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether volunteers in the Samaritans will be eligible for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Medal.

To qualify for The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal recipients must be in an eligible public sector role in a frontline emergency service. This does not include volunteers in the Samaritans. Equally, volunteers in the UK vaccination effort are not eligible for the Medal.

The Government does however recognise the extraordinary contributions made by people across communities in response to the pandemic, and notes the outstanding work of Samaritans’ volunteers.

The Prime Minister has announced that the government will establish a UK Commission on COVID Commemoration to consider the appropriate way to remember those who have lost their lives and to recognise those involved in the unprecedented response across all critical sectors. The Government will set out the Commission membership and terms of reference in due course.