On 3 September, my Adjournment Debate entitled “That this House has considered Government support for people harmed following Covid-19 vaccinations” was held in Westminster Hall. It was in the summer of 2021 that I first helped to start the campaign on behalf of those who have suffered ill effects or bereavement as a result of Covid-19 vaccinations. Now with more data available, the context for the debate, and some of the relevant issues, has shifted. We can now see that, since the roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccinations largely in early 2021, 21,144 claims to the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme relating to Covid-19 vaccinations have been received (up to June 2025) and 224 claims have been awarded (up to May 2025). Awards of £120,000 have been granted to those who have proved that a Covid-19 vaccination caused serious disablement or death. But the Covid-19 vaccination figures stand in stark contrast to those relating to all non-Covid vaccines. Since 1979 to the end of March 2025, only 958 claims to the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme have been made and only 9 have been awarded, which stands at around 22 times fewer than those relating to Covid-19 vaccines and over the course of 46 years, rather than four.
It is those figures which provided the impetus for the debate and which were directly put to the Minister. The Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme itself has been shown to need urgent reform, particularly in areas of ensuring fairness as the 60% disablement threshold is high and there is a lack of clarity on how to meet it, that the £120,000 award is very outdated and has not been updated even by inflation since 2007, and that there is a limitation period of three years on relevant civil claims. The limitation period is particularly devastating for those who urgently need recourse aside from the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme, and especially as new adverse effects continue to be monitored and added to the roster.
To date, Government comment on the issue has been vacillating. Whilst the Government purports to recognise the ongoing harm to those affected, the Minister refused to set out a timeline for change. Instead, the Minister noted that those affected, their families and colleagues, require “a more detailed update” but would not answer calls for nor give any framework for that update. The Minister focussed largely on administrative measures which have been taken within the NHS Business Services Authority (which administers the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme) in the hope of addressing more claims and quicker. But the latest figures show that 6,193 claims are still ‘live’ and 1,900 have been outstanding for more than 12 months (up to June 2025).
The other key impetus for the debate was to show that a failing or unsupported Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme system is undermining vaccine confidence and uptake. These points were put directly to the Minister and her acknowledgement that the issue is “really important” for “upholding trust” in vaccinations is to be welcomed. She accepted that “public confidence is at stake”. Yet, there remains a tension between the fact that the VDPS was extended to Covid-19 vaccines in order to foster such public confidence, and that those who now seek to rely on it are apparently being left behind (despite promises that this would never happen).
The Government is full of words of comfort but these are not matched by its actions. Despite the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care being personally invested in the issue and describing it as not having “gone off the boil”, there has been no “detailed update” nor any specific timeline. Esther McVey, who was a Cabinet Office Minister prior to the election confirmed in the debate that the groundwork for change had been made. The continuing delay is indefensible. It has been 14 months since the election. Public confidence in the safety of vaccines and in being vaccinated is diminishing, at great risk to public health. Those who do the right thing in being vaccinated but then suffer adverse consequences should not be sidelined. The future credibility of vaccination programmes depends upon it.
The urgent need for Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme reform
