To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) pursuant to the answer of 21 January 2008, Official Report, column 1689W, on departmental public expenditure, what the cost was of writing-off date expired vaccines broken down by type of vaccine 2006-07; (184461)

In 2006-07 488,629 doses of vaccine in total were written off.

There were 488,457 doses of vaccine written off due to date expiring. They were:

243,000 doses of the Bacille Calmette Guerin (BCG) vaccine;

123,954 doses of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine;

71,568 doses of combined diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTaP) vaccine;

49,799 doses of Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib) vaccine; and

136 doses of tetanus and diphtheria (Td) vaccine.

This equates to £2,092,513. The cost breakdown cannot be give for individual vaccines as the cost per dose is commercially confidential information.

There were 172 doses of vaccine written off because they were damaged. They were:

70 doses of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine;

69 doses of diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, inactivated polio and haemophilus influenzae; type B, (DTaP/IPV+Hib) vaccine;

21 doses of meningococcal C vaccine vaccine; and

12 doses of the MMR vaccine

The total value of the written-off stock due to date expiry and damage (£2,096,000) represents about 1 per cent. of the vaccine distributed in the United Kingdom in 2006-07.