CAMPAIGNERS urged the government today to be better prepared for another pandemic as the Covid-19 inquiry published its latest report.

The inquiry found the vaccine programme was an “extraordinary feat,” but the payment scheme for people injured by jabs must be urgently reformed.

Inquiry chairwoman Baroness Heather Hallett said the maximum payout should almost double to at least £200,000 from the current £120,000 and that the threshold requiring people to be 60 per cent disabled to receive payment should be scrapped, leaving “those people with a significant injury that affects how they live … with nothing.”

She also acknowledged “the suffering of those for whom vaccines led to serious injury or death.”

The inquiry noted the one-off tax-free payment of £120,000, through the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme, 
was last revised in 2007, and an inflationary adjustment would lead to a payment in excess of £200,000.

Ms Hallett also called for multiple levels of payment “commensurate with the degree of injury suffered.”

On vaccine hesitancy, the inquiry found that lower uptake in poorer communities and among some ethnic minority groups was predictable.

Ms Hallett said compulsory jabs for care home workers, a policy later scrapped, did not have wide support and “is likely to have contributed to alienation and increased vaccine hesitancy.”

Her five recommendations also included establishing a “pharmaceutical expert advisory panel” to ensure Britain is well placed to develop, procure and manufacture vaccines and new treatments, and producing targeted vaccine strategies and better monitoring of vaccine uptake and delivery.

In response to the findings, Unison general secretary Andrea Egan said compulsory Covid jabs for care staff were never the right approach, and ministers should have “run targeted campaigns to reassure staff the vaccine was safe, amid the deluge of anti-vax nonsense.”

She said: “Forcing care workers to take the vaccine, under threat of the sack, was the wrong approach.

“Rather than boosting take-up, this risked care workers being fired or quitting.

“That was only ever going to worsen the staffing crisis and divert desperately needed resources.”

Kate Scott, of Vaccine Injured and Bereaved UK (VIBUK), said vaccine injury and death are part of the pandemic story, saying: “We welcome this as an important step towards fairness for those who suffered devastating consequences.”

The government welcomed the findings and said the achievements “reflect the strength of our world-leading life sciences sector” and that it would consider the recommendations.