My Lords, I think I am back now. I apologise: I have no idea what happened then, but the trusty old iPad is coming in useful. I think that when I lost my link I was talking about media companies, so I will pick up with that.
Despite the Government’s and social media companies’ announcement last week of new measures to tackle the issue, dedicated anti-vaccine groups with hundreds of thousands of members on social media are still churning out disinformation—100,000 Facebook users and 180,000 on TikTok. Although the Government have talked about online harms for a long time, it is unlikely that that legislation will have Royal Assent in time to help with this.
Finally, the situation was made clear in the Question in the House yesterday from my noble friend Lady Lawrence about the BAME community and the vaccine being rolled out. She said:
“I have heard messages from the black community about their mistrust of and lack of confidence in the vaccine. I ask Her Majesty’s Government: what proportion of those taking part in the vaccine trials were black, Asian or from ethnic minorities before the rollout?”—[Official Report, 13/1/21; col. 725.]
That was amplified by the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, who made the point that, although BAME communities were initially less likely to accept a Covid vaccine than white communities, when they had the opportunity to discuss their concerns with healthcare professionals, they were more likely than white communities to be persuaded to have the vaccine. Is the noble Lord familiar with that polling, and will he follow it up? I beg to move.