Department of Health and Social Care written question – answered at on 29 April 2026.
Esther McVey
Conservative, Tatton
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish full citations for the peer-reviewed population-level studies from the UK, France, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden mentioned by the MHRA’s Chief Safety Officer in the quote that appeared on GB News online, dated 27 March 2026.
Zubir Ahmed
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) considers a wide range of safety data as part of post-authorisation safety monitoring. One source of this data is academic literature. References for the studies mentioned by the MHRA’s Chief Safety Officer in the article in question, namely for France and for Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, are available, respectively, at the following two links:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12679329/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39935358/
Whilst there have been no United Kingdom based, population wide studies performed that investigate COVID-19 vaccines and cancer incidence rates specifically, the MHRA’s Chief Safety Officer was referencing a population-based study reviewing COVID-19 vaccine uptake in individuals with haematological malignancy, as well as a population-based study reviewing COVID-19 vaccine efficacy in patients with cancer. These studies are accessible, respectively, via the following links:
https://www.ejcancer.com/article/S0959-8049(23)00059-X/fulltext
https://europepmc.org/article/MED/35617989
Neither of these studies identified any adverse safety signals, and both suggest vaccination is in the interest of individuals with cancer.
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Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.