Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will urgently formalise the process of (a) administering spare vaccination doses and (b) filling vaccination appointment gaps.

No vaccine should be wasted and there is National Health Service operational guidance in place to help prevent this. Following this guidance, all vaccination centres should have a reserve list of people in the eligible cohorts who can be called in case doses would be wasted. If no members of the currently prioritised cohorts are available, it is recommended that members of the next priority cohorts be vaccinated. In the extremely exceptional case where this is not possible, locally available people can be vaccinated based on clinical judgement.