Mr. Tony O'Brien:

I can give more information but some of it is not good information. In a past life I commissioned the first health technology assessment on the HPV vaccine and I regard the campaign against the vaccine as nothing short of emotional terrorism. Unfortunately, however, so far it has been successful. Vaccine uptake rates in 2014-15 were 87% and they fell to 72% in 2015-16 but provisional data for the current year indicate that only 50% of girls received the first dose in September or October 2016. There has been some improvement on that in the programme this year but the net effect renders hundreds, if not thousands, of teenage girls at risk of a substantially preventable illness. The campaign is absolutely without evidence or foundation and those who are engaged in it are literally playing God with people's emotions and lives. We are committed to redoubling our efforts to counter this misinformation and to restore confidence in what, in conjunction with the cervical check programme, can be a hugely effective campaign to substantially reduce both the incidence of and loss of life from cervical cancer and other conditions.