The Covid-19 vaccine programme in the UK was an “extraordinary feat” but the payment scheme for people injured by the jabs must be urgently reformed, the public inquiry has found.
In her report into the Covid pandemic, inquiry chairwoman Baroness Heather Hallett praised the fact the UK was a world leader in biomedical sciences, which set it in good stead for developing and rolling out vaccines at scale.
However, she said the Government must now act urgently to reform the scheme for payments to the “small minority” of people damaged by the vaccines, almost doubling maximum payouts to at least £200,000, from an upper limit of £120,000 at present.
She said the threshold for people to be 60% disabled to receive payment should be scrapped, saying it leaves “those people with a significant injury that affects how they live, but does not meet the 60% threshold, with nothing”.
The report added: “This part of the scheme should be reformed as a matter of urgency, and consideration should be given to a graduated threshold scheme.”
Lady Hallett also called for the Government to deal with the worldwide problem of vaccine hesitancy and urged greater consideration of why some groups of people are unwilling or unable to access jabs.
The UK Covid-19 Public Inquiry report out on Thursday into vaccines and therapeutics is the fourth report into the handling of the pandemic.
In her foreword to 274-page study, Lady Hallett said even though some people were harmed by vaccines, there were effective systems in place to assess the safety and efficacy of the jabs during the pandemic.
“These included rigorous trials and regulatory approval processes and the taking of prompt action when any problem was identified,” she said.
By March 2023, 475,000 lives had been saved by jabs in England and Scotland, and millions of lives were saved worldwide.
“On any objective analysis, the risks of the Covid-19 vaccines were carefully managed and were far outweighed by the benefits,” she added.
She continued: “The vaccination programme was an extraordinary feat.
“Effective vaccines were developed, produced and delivered to the majority of the population in record time.”
Nevertheless, Lady Hallett said the inquiry “acknowledges the suffering of those for whom vaccines led to serious injury or death”.
The report said the inquiry heard “moving evidence” from bereaved people and those injured by the jabs and how some “have often felt silenced or ignored”.
It noted the one-off tax-free payment of £120,000 available through the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme was last revised in 2007.
The Chair of the UK Covid Inquiry, Baroness Hallett has made a statement on her findings and recommendations.
View the statement in full by visiting our YouTube channel 📺 - link in our bio 👇 pic.twitter.com/ahbMDn36nW
Lady Hallett said it is clear “the current maximum payment of £120,000 is too low”, adding: “It should be raised at least to come into line with inflation.
“An inflationary adjustment, as at December 2025, would lead to a payment in excess of £200,000.”
She said the Government must then subsequently apply annual increases in line with inflation and “introduce multiple levels of payment, commensurate with the degree of injury suffered”.
Between 2021 and 2023, some 125 applications to the damage scheme resulted in payment and 2,266 were refused.
On vaccine hesitancy, the inquiry found lower uptake in poorer communities and among some ethnic minority groups was predictable and could have been better planned for.
Lady Hallett said: “Action is needed in all four nations to build trust within communities with lower vaccine uptake and to make vaccines more accessible to them, before the next pandemic hits.”
Turning to the search for vaccines to tackle Covid, Lady Hallett noted the fact the UK government took an “at-risk” approach to funding them, which then paid off.
1/ The Chair of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, Baroness Heather Hallett, has today published her fourth report. pic.twitter.com/z5nD2wqpz1
— UK Covid-19 Inquiry (@covidinquiryuk) April 16, 2026
“It was willing to invest substantial sums of money in a wide range of potential vaccines and drugs, knowing that not all of them would be successful. All those involved deserve great credit,” she said.
However, she remarked that when the UK entered the pandemic, “one weakness” was a “lack” of manufacturing capacity for vaccines ad treatments.
She pointed out that in 2018, a £65 million grant was made to the Vaccine and Innovation Centre, which had been created with the aim of enhancing UK vaccine production and manufacture.
But the probe was told that due to a “very considerable amount of dithering”, the centre was not operational when the pandemic hit.
Overall, Lady Hallett made five recommendations, including reforming the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme; giving regulatory bodies access to healthcare records for safety monitoring for new vaccines and therapeutics; establishing a “pharmaceutical expert advisory panel” to ensure the UK 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.
By the end of December, the inquiry had spent just under £204 million, including on set-up, chairwoman and lawyer costs, and holding public hearings in all four nations of the UK.
The Government said it has spent £111 million in responding to the inquiry, covering legal advice and staffing costs.
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