Reports & recommendations

The UK government should establish a standing pharmaceutical expert advisory panel, in consultation with the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. The panel should include ministers, civil servants and representatives from industry and academia, and be led by an independent Chair with experience of working in a relevant industry. The panel's role should be to: oversee the UK's preparedness to develop, procure and manufacture pharmaceuticals (vaccines and therapeutics) in the event of a pandemic or health emergency, assisting with cross-government strategy development; ensure that the UK government and devolved administrations, their agencies, industry and academia are aligned around shared goals in developing vaccines and therapeutics for pandemic diseases; oversee strong links between government and the pharmaceutical industry; advise the UK government on how to incentivise pharmaceutical companies to invest in manufacturing facilities and research in the UK; and advise the UK government on its research investments, with a view to ensuring a diverse portfolio of pharmaceutical research in the UK. During a pandemic, the panel should form the basis of specialist taskforces, which would be responsible for securing and developing medical interventions and leading on their procurement on behalf of the four nations of the UK. They should have sufficient autonomy, delegation and direct access to senior ministers, similar to that which worked well in the Covid-19 pandemic.

The UK government, Scottish Government, Welsh Government and Northern Ireland Executive should maintain networks with local communities to produce targeted vaccination strategies and communications. To achieve this: The Scottish Government, Welsh Government and Northern Ireland Executive should establish local community networks, mirroring the approach being taken by the UK Health Security Agency. All four governments should work with their network to identify specific and measurable actions to improve vaccine uptake and reduce inequalities and consult with these networks on communications campaigns and delivery approaches. All four governments should publish a report annually on progress against these actions.

The UK government and devolved administrations should work together, with their respective health delivery services, to facilitate and coordinate regulatory bodies' access to healthcare records in order to make the post-authorisation safety monitoring of new vaccines and therapeutics more efficient. In particular, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency should be granted specific and proportionate access to comprehensive and comparable data from across the four nations of the UK, including linked primary and secondary healthcare data records. This should include data on vaccines and therapeutics administration. This improved linkage must be accompanied by strong safeguards for patient confidentiality, which the Information Commissioner's Office should work with the four governments to ensure.

The UK government must reform the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme as soon as possible. The reform should include as a minimum: increasing the £120,000 payment, at least in line with inflation to date; subsequently applying annual increases in line with inflation; introducing multiple levels of payment, commensurate with the degree of injury suffered; and any transitional arrangements necessary to provide for fairness between applicants to the existing scheme and applicants to the revised scheme.