Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the post-implementation surveillance on the public health effect of a change to the pneumococcal immunisation programme that would be required as a result of the advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to move to a 1 plus 1 schedule at that Committee's meeting on 4 October 2017.

Public Health England conducts national invasive pneumococcal disease surveillance in England and Wales, with a national reference laboratory that serotypes nearly all invasive pneumococcal isolates. As part of its advice following its October 2017 meeting, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation agreed that any move to a 1+1 schedule would require maintenance of the high quality surveillance for pneumococcal disease currently in place, to ensure any changes in disease epidemiology were accurately captured in a timely manner.