Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reasons Leeds Arts University has not been included on the list for rapid covid-19 testing ahead of the Christmas 2020 holiday period.

We have worked with 152 universities in England, which covers three quarters of the student population, to offer the majority of asymptomatic COVID-19 tests before they returned home for the Christmas break.

Almost all universities who expressed an interest in mass testing continued through the programme to order test kits and set up asymptomatic testing sites. However, due to the unprecedented scale of the operation, not every university was able to take part in the December phase of the project. Students at Leeds Arts University were given access to the testing service at Leeds Beckett University.