Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what consideration they gave to placing a statutory duty on the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament an annual report on the performance of national immunisation programmes, including health inequalities and progress towards national targets, when developing the Health Bill.

We have established a programme that will, alongside closer working and a safe transfer checklist, help to ensure that integrated care boards (ICBs) are ready to take on their new responsibilities for vaccination from April 2027. We will also ensure there is appropriate accountability for vaccination services after the responsibility for their commissioning is delegated to ICBs. Work is ongoing and aligned to the merger of the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England.

No changes in the current reporting frameworks in this area are planned, but we keep all such matters under regular review.

The Department does not collect data on the costs of responding to outbreaks of vaccine-preventable infectious disease, but the methodology for assessing the cost-effectiveness of vaccination programmes routinely accounts for benefits such as avoided National Health Service and social care costs, as well as improved health outcomes.