UK government accepts need to reform vaccine damage payment scheme

The UK government has accepted that the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme needs reform and has committed to reviewing it, in its response to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry’s report on vaccines and therapeutics. The Department of Health and Social Care published the response on 16 October 2026, six months after the Inquiry published its Module 4 report on 16 April 2026.

The response addresses the report’s five recommendations. It does not label each one as accepted or rejected. It gives no cost for any of the measures it describes, and no timetable for reviewing the compensation scheme or widening the medicines regulator’s access to health data.

What the Inquiry asked for on compensation

The Inquiry’s fifth recommendation said the UK government “must reform the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme as soon as possible”. As a minimum, it asked for the GBP 120,000 payment to be raised at least in line with inflation to date, for annual inflation increases after that, for multiple levels of payment matched to the degree of injury, and for transitional arrangements to ensure fairness between applicants to the existing and revised schemes.

The response says the government “accepts that there is a need for reform of the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme, and is committed to reviewing the scheme to ensure it is fit for purpose and delivered effectively.” It says it will work with people injured by vaccines and their families, and that the Inquiry’s findings will be central as it considers a range of options. It does not commit to raising the payment, to annual uprating, to tiered awards or to transitional arrangements. It also notes separate concerns, raised in recent Parliamentary Questions, about the scheme’s administrative costs. On timing, the document says only that the government will provide further details in due course, including through Inquiry implementation updates.

Industry advice, safety data and the devolved nations

On the first recommendation, for a standing pharmaceutical expert advisory panel, the government proposes a modified version: an industry stakeholder advisory group with a defined advisory remit and membership drawing on technical, scientific, manufacturing and commercial expertise. Responsibility for overseeing preparedness and setting strategic direction stays with government. The group’s scope, membership and relationship to existing arrangements have not yet been set out.

On the fourth recommendation, that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) should get specific and proportionate access to comprehensive and comparable health data from across the four nations of the UK for post-authorisation safety monitoring, the government agrees with the aim. It says greater scale and more reliable links to secondary care data are needed, that it will explore future work with the Health Data Research Service, and that meeting the recommendation “is likely to require significant investment over time”. No figure is given.

The other responses point to existing UK Health Security Agency work on vaccine equity, a Four Nations Forum equity subgroup being set up in 2026 and the 2025 parental attitudes survey, which covered the whole UK for the first time. Health is devolved, and the document says the UK government worked with the devolved governments to align measures. The Welsh Government published its own response to the Module 4 report on 13 October 2026.

Our reading

• The Healthcare Daily’s reading: for vaccine makers, insurers and the public purse, the compensation question stays open. Accepting the need for reform without a figure or a date means the cost of any change to the GBP 120,000 payment cannot yet be modelled.
• The commitment on MHRA data access depends on investment the response does not quantify. Suppliers of data linkage and safety surveillance services should read it as a direction of travel rather than a funded programme.
• Replacing an expert panel with an industry stakeholder group keeps manufacturers in an advisory role while government keeps control of preparedness. How membership and remit are defined will show how much weight manufacturing and commercial expertise carries.