Speeches by Beales.

“The hon. Member is very generous with his time. I always have a lot of time for him. He is talking about our constituents in Hillingdon. Is it not the case that the financial settlement of the previous Tory Government, which also included council tax, had a 7% cut to core spending power for our constituents in Hillingd…”

“You have already said that the strategy is right, that misinformation is not the major factor and that it is about access. Do you have evidence that access to the health service has decreased? Viewing it from my perspective of what we can see, there are a number of initiatives to widen access points. The proposition I …”

“If this is not failure, what would failure look like?”

“That is not very inspiring: it is not as bad as it could have been.”

“How does it compare with what the strategy envisaged? Are we on target or off target?”

“Are we on target or off target compared with what the strategy envisaged?”

“This might be for Michelle and David. I am going to ask some questions about planning guidance and the vaccine strategy. Three years on from its development, how does performance compare with what was expected in the strategy?”

“So on target?”

“The vaccine strategy is quite silent on these issues about hesitancy really; again, it just talks about access. Do you think that is a problem? Should the strategy be talking about the things we are discussing around hesitancy and misinformation?”

“That is fair to say. I could certainly talk about complacency when looking at the effect of the strategy over the last few years. Finally, you talked about malign actors, Greg. Do you think people who are actively promoting false information about vaccines should be held responsible for the implications that has?”

“Should social media companies be held responsible for moderating incorrect health information about things like vaccines?”

“Have we done that? Are we halting the decline, or are rates still declining?”

“Is that not the proposition? Should the NHS and the Government be actively trying to promote factual information around vaccinations?”

“Do you want to elaborate on how you tackle the structural drivers of misinformation? What would that look like?”

“If you believe a conspiracy theory or misinformation, are you likely to go out and seek a GP?”

“Does anyone else have any thoughts about how systems, locally or nationally, could be supported to tackle misinformation, or to improve vaccine confidence?”

“I suppose that goes directly to the point that it is not just about access. In that community, you could make vaccines available in every single GP surgery with open access: a walk-in service. But unless you are doing active work to reach out to the community to start talking to them about vaccines, you will not build …”

“Some yes, some no, basically?”

“As we are not confident that we are on track, and as we are disappointed, should we review the strategy? Is new impetus needed?”

“That is my question. Should we have a new strategy that includes things like a numerical forecast and targets to aim towards, as well as other issues that we might want to include?”