Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to liaise internationally with the scientists who sequence covid-19 variants of concern in the future.

We are offering support to selected partners globally to improve genomic sequencing capacity and capability to detect new variants. Through the New Variant Assessment Platform programme, the United Kingdom works with international partners such as the World Health Organization, health ministries and public health laboratories which sequence COVID-19 variants of concern, to enable data sharing and strengthen global surveillance. Plans to continue this work in the medium to long-term are ongoing.