Steve Brine
Main Page: Steve Brine (Conservative - Winchester)Department Debates - View all Steve Brine's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
The answer is yes. In Oldham in particular, where there has been a very serious outbreak, making sure we have that connection between the national system and the data flowing through to local contract tracers is incredibly important. We are working on some innovative solutions proposed by the local authority and others in Manchester to enhance that system as much as we possibly can to keep control of the virus.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
Lots of my constituents in Winchester have had tests, and the Government deserve credit for that, because we as a country started from a position where we did not have a system in place. The Health Secretary had to create a system from scratch, and he had great help in that from the private sector. We certainly should not be denigrating that; we should be thanking it and expanding on that help. Given the operational challenges that the Secretary of State spoke about, I wonder whether GP surgeries, or even our wonderful community pharmacists, could be part of the solution for front-door testing. What is the cross-Government superhuman effort part II to increase lab capacity—AstraZeneca was very helpful in part I —as that seems to be the challenge outlined by my right hon. Friend?
Matt Hancock
We are increasing that capacity, and we are bringing in new technologies to those labs to expand on that. My hon. Friend is a great expert in this issue and makes a really important point. The current technology works best in labs—people send a swab to the lab and get the result back, but there is a huge amount of logistics around that. We want technologies that can be in a pharmacy or a GP service, so that people get the test result back straight away. When such technologies come on stream—I am optimistic about this, as I am about a lot of things; I do not think I could do this job at the moment without being optimistic—that will give us a chance to get testing out into the community at every level.
We need to tackle problems such as the challenges you have in Chorley, Mr Speaker—you rightly brought them to my attention in your role as a local MP, as we all are—not by having a big national system, but through solutions that are deeply embedded in the community. When we have the technology to do that, we will be in a stronger place, and we are putting every possible effort and support behind people to try to make that happen.