Freedom of Information request on a list of new vaccines since 2000 (FOI 21/931)
Published 17 January 2022
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/freedom-of-information-responses-from-the-mhra-week-commencing-13-september-2021/freedom-of-information-request-on-a-list-of-new-vaccines-since-2000-foi-21931
13th September 2021
FOI 21/931
Dear
Thank you for your information request, dated 15th August 2021 where you asked for:
A full list of all the new vaccine that have been in use in the UK since 2000 to the present day. Please provide all the vaccine related deaths, per month, per vaccine for each year from 2000 to the present day, using the list requested above. Please could you also provide all side effects and adverse reactions for each vaccine, per month for each year from 2000 to the present day.
I can confirm that the MHRA does hold some of the information that you have requested. However, we have also determined that the information is exempt under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act and we cannot process your request any further.
Section 12 of the Act allows public authorities to refuse requests where the cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate limit, which for central government is set at £600. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 24 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.
In order to process your request, we would need to: access the records for every vaccine which has been in use for 21 years and reformat the data so that it shows related deaths per month. We consider that this would take longer than 24 working hours to complete.
As your request has been refused under Section 12 of the FOI Act, we cannot answer any part of it however we will be happy to provide a response to any refined request you send in the future. For example, you could refine your request by specifying which vaccines you are interested in. I have included a link to the current routine immunisation schedule:
Please note that substantially similar requests made within 60 working days of an original request can be aggregated into one for the purposes of calculating a cost limit, meaning that section 12 could still apply.
If you disagree with how we have interpreted the Freedom of Information Act 2000 with regards to your request, you can ask for the decision to be reviewed. The review would be carried out by a senior member of the Agency who was not involved with the original decision.
If you have a query about the information provided, please reply to this email.
Yours sincerely
MHRA Customer Service Centre