Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment of the implications for her policies of the findings in the report by the National Audit Office entitled Investigation into the UKHSA’s health security campus programme, published on 28 February 2024, on the adequacy of funding for (a) facilities at Porton Down and (b) other pandemic infrastructure.

The Department remains committed to ensuring that the United Kingdom retains world class secure laboratories, which play a vital role in understanding new threats and developing and evaluating the diagnostic tools, vaccines, and wider clinical countermeasures to combat them.

The Department continues to work closely with the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to ensure that there are appropriate plans in place to respond to future pandemics. This includes critical national infrastructure maintained by UKHSA that provides the specialist capabilities required to respond to emerging and high consequence infectious diseases, such as high containment laboratories and specialist diagnostic equipment.