Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what criminal background checks are undertaken against (a) covid-19 testing site workers who interact with children under 12 years old and (b) other testing site workers.

We expect our providers to have rigorous recruitment practices to ensure that the staff they recruit to work on test sites are appropriate for the role. Children must be accompanied by their parent or guardian at a test site. Test site staff are not permitted to test children aged under 12 years old. In all test settings other than a National Health Service setting such as in hospital or a general practitioner surgery, children aged under 12 years old must only be tested by their parent or guardian.