Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help promote UK vaccine development.

Vaccines are critical for preventing infectious diseases, and lessening their impact. Vaccine development ensures that the United Kingdom remains on the cutting edge of technological advancements, and is able to respond to new and emerging disease risks. The Department’s work on vaccine development aligns with the Biological Security Strategy, which seeks to ensure that the UK is resilient to a spectrum of biological threats and is a world leader in responsible innovation by 2030. It also contributes to the 100 Days Mission, a global mission to have safe and effective diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines in the first 100 days of a pandemic. The Department promotes UK vaccine development through a variety of mechanisms, including:

• investing in innovative research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research and its infrastructure, which actively supports the development of new interventions to prevent disease, including research for the whole of the national immunisation programme;
• funding the UK Vaccine Network’s (UKVN) research projects into vaccines and vaccine technology that could prevent and respond to epidemics in low- and middle-income countries, with research innovations developed through this project having the potential to also promote the development of vaccine technologies with domestic applications, with, for example, the UKVN’s funding for a Middle East respiratory syndrome vaccine being rapidly adapted to develop the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine;
• funding the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which aims to accelerate development of vaccines against epidemic and pandemic threats and to enable equitable access to these vaccines globally, with the UK having committed to provide £160 million in support for the CEPI over five years at the Global Pandemic Preparedness Summit in March 2022;
• establishing the UK Health Security Agency’s Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre to strengthen UK research and develop vaccines against the world’s deadliest pathogens;
• investing in the Moderna Strategic Partnership, through which Moderna has invested in mRNA research and development in the UK and is building a state-of-the-art vaccine manufacturing centre with the ability to produce up to 250 million vaccines a year; and
• assessing bids into the Government’s Life Sciences Innovation Manufacturing Fund, announced on 30 October 2024, which will provide up to £520 million in capital grants to help the UK’s medicines manufacturers grow and innovate.