5. Will the First Minister provide an update on what the Welsh Government is doing to tackle vaccine misinformation? OQ55947

Llywydd, can I thank Joyce Watson for that important question? The Welsh Government will continue to support health boards and Public Health Wales to ensure that immunisation information is accurate and accessible and that all those delivering vaccinations are well trained and confident when providing immunisation information.

I thank you for that, First Minister. Last week, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that they had developed a vaccine for COVID-19 and that it was showing promising results, but almost immediately there were messages circulating on social media channels suggesting that the vaccine would be harmful, without any substantiated evidence. I understand that it's natural that people will have concerns and questions about the safety of new and existing vaccines, but I do believe that the misinformation that we've seen on social media platforms has the potential to do a significant amount of harm. First Minister, what discussions has the Welsh Government had with social media channels regarding vaccine misinformation and how we can tackle that? And what steps are being taken to encourage people to access information in a reliable format? 

Well, Llywydd, I thank Joyce Watson for those follow-up questions. She's right to point to the danger of vaccine misinformation—deliberate, malicious misinformation. It's part of a group of attitudes that, unfortunately, have been given credence in other parts of the world. These attitudes emanate from the same group of people who are coronavirus deniers, who try to persuade people to distrust election results, and, as a result, they have a reach into places through social media that could, if things went wrong, do what Joyce Watson said and discourage people who would benefit from vaccination from coming forward. We work with the Cabinet Office in London. They have a rapid response unit, which is expressly there to respond to coronavirus misinformation. And, working with social media platforms, there has been some success, which I'm keen to recognise, in persuading those social media platforms to remove misinformation where it can clearly be identified as such.

I think we have to take some comfort, though, Llywydd, from the actual evidence of what has happened in vaccination programmes over the last period. We have actually gained ground in childhood immunisation programmes during the period of the pandemic. The uptake of the first dose of MMR increased in the first quarter of this year, despite all the difficulties that parents would have experienced in trying to present the child for vaccination. The third scheduled dose of meningococcal group B vaccination is at the highest ever level in Wales. And, of course, we are reaching more people with flu vaccination than ever before, and 70 per cent of people in the over-60 age group have now been vaccinated. It was under 60 per cent this time last year. Thirty seven per cent of under-65s at risk have been vaccinated, and it was 27 per cent this time last year. Seventy three per cent of children aged between four and 10 have been vaccinated. So, while I share the Member's anxieties, the actual behaviour of people in Wales suggests that, when a vaccine is available to them and they have confidence in it, they are coming forward in large numbers, and that's what we will want to encourage when there are vaccines available for coronavirus as well.

First Minister, I do agree with you that there have been improvements in vaccine uptake, but I'd also like to point out that, according to the most recent seasonal influenza Wales 2019-20 annual report, the uptake of the flu vaccine amongst NHS staff was only 56 per cent this year, and you'd think that NHS staff, more than almost anybody else, would surely really understand the value of a vaccine and what benefits we can all get from it. We've also got our very hard-to-reach people, the people who speak neither Welsh nor English, people who are new to our country, people in very, very marginalised areas, or people in very rural areas, where, again, that whole notion of coming out and getting vaccinated—. Plus the vaccine for COVID needs to be a two-vaccine stop, where you might have a situation where someone has one and just thinks, 'Oh well, that's it, I'm done', when in fact they need that second one to make sure that they are really taken care of. So I wonder what plans the Government will be putting together, either as Wales itself or as a UK entity, in trying to really get a strong message out that, actually, there is nothing to be fearful of.

And may I just very quickly also say that we must be very careful how we do that messaging? I speak as a parent whose first child had all the MMRs individually because Andrew Wakefield was at the height of his scare fest, and my second child had just the MMR, because just normal, ordinary people can take fright very easily when all the wrong messages go out. So, I think it's incredibly important that we put together a really cohesive and coherent communication policy, and I would be very interested to know what your Government is doing to put that together and, indeed, how all of us might be able to help to spread that message.

I thank the Member for that. Llywydd, I agree with Angela Burns that the percentage of NHS staff taking up a flu vaccination last year was not good enough. It was better than previous years, and I remember many discussions with Darren Millar here in this Chamber, when I was the health Minister and he was the health spokesperson, about the extent to which we could insist and require that staff take up vaccination.

The good news is that the numbers are well above where they were last year at this point, so the improvements that we've seen in the general population are reflected in healthcare staff as well. But I believe they have a professional obligation to protect themselves from the risks that they otherwise pose to those people who use their service. So, for those staff, it is not just a matter of protecting yourself; it is a professional obligation, I always argued, to make sure that you avoid a risk that otherwise you may pose to others, and we need to do more. We need to do it with the royal collages and with the trade unions in that field to drive that figure up even further.

I was reminded in Angela Burns's supplementary, Llywydd, that when we saw the measles outbreak in Swansea some years ago, the families we failed to reach were not families, in fact, who were avoiding vaccination. They were the families that Angela Burns referred to—people whose first language is neither Welsh nor English, who are mobile and whose addresses change rapidly, and where conventional ways of reaching them don't work. But I do think Public Health Wales learned a lot from that experience, and we're better equipped now to make sure that we can respond to those difficulties.

And finally, can I just agree with the final point that Angela Burns made, Llywydd, that we need the effort that can be made by all of us? Every Member of this Senedd has some standing in their local communities. We all speak with some authority to groups within our own areas, and it's adding our own voices, as well as those of public services, to that global effort we will need when a vaccine becomes available to persuade people of its safety, of its efficacy, and of the very many good reasons there will be why people should come forward to receive it.

I'm grateful to Joyce for tabling this very important question. First Minister, it's not only online that misinformation about COVID is being shared. It was drawn to my attention last week, a particularly pernicious leaflet being put through people's doors. It was in Pembrokeshire, but I was also made aware that it was happening in Caerphilly. It had an official look about it—you could have mistaken it for an official Government communication. Misinformation, I think, First Minister, online is bad enough, but at least people have got some sort of choice about what Facebook groups they join and what Twitter feeds they follow. This leaflet was coming through everybody's doors without them having any right to reject it. I think that we all in this Chamber support freedom of speech, but freedom of speech needs to be exercised responsibly. Is there anything further the Welsh Government can do, working with the police service in the areas that have been affected by this leaflet and with local authorities, to try and counteract this message? And is there any legal redress against people who are deliberately sharing information that could be very frightening to people and very, very damaging, as we've already touched on around areas like persuading people to take up the vaccination?

Llywydd, I think Helen Mary Jones is right: there's something particularly insidious about something being put through your own door and that deliberate and, as I would say, malicious attempt to mislead people with inaccurate information. I know that local people who've received that leaflet in Pembrokeshire have informed the police and looked to see whether there is any redress. It's the same leaflet, as I understand it, that has been in circulation in many parts, not just of Wales, but more widely. Amongst the things we can do are the things that Angela Burns referred to, which is to mobilise voices that will carry some weight in local communities. And I know that tomorrow evening, Steve Moore, as the chief executive of Hywel Dda health board, and the police and crime commissioner for the area are jointly holding a Facebook live session, partly in response to the circulation of that leaflet, so that they can be together in providing authoritative information to the local population and to do it directly in that way.