Commons bows to public opinion on meningitis vaccine

PARLIAMENT will discuss reversing a decision to limit the meningitis B vaccine to babies aged less than nine months after MPs said that a recordbreaking online petition had to be taken seriously.

A debate is expected to be announced on the subject today following a private Commons committee discussion about the petition, which calls for all children under the age of 11 to be given the vaccine and which has been signed by more than 700,000 people.

More than half of the members of the petitions committee, which considers petitions presented to Parliament, told

The Telegraph they had no doubt the subject would be put forward for de- bate, as members were largely sympathetic and said it would be wrong to ignore a subject which had received such public support.

Ben Howlett, the Tory MP and member of the committee, said he would have “absolutely no hesitation” in asking for the subject to be debated and also backed calls for the vaccination campaign to be extended. He has been lobbying for the new Bexsero vaccine, which protects against the potentially fatal bug, having witnessed the devastating effects the disease had on a family in his constituency.

Harmonie-Rose Allen, from Bath, lost both arms and legs after she contracted meningitis B at just 11 months old. Mr Howlett said: “We need to make sure that all children are vaccinated.” Helen Jones, a Labour MP and chairman of the committee, said: “It’s obviously not going to be ignored. It’s a serious subject and it’s got an awful lot of signatures.”

Free NHS doses of the vaccine have been approved only for babies under nine months, the most at-risk group. Extending the programme would cost the NHS hundreds of millions of pounds.