Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what has the total cost to the public purse of the Government PCR testing programme been to date; and how many PCR tests have been completed.

The UK Health Security Agency is unable to provide the information requested on the total cost of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing programme as it is commercially sensitive.

Between April 2020 and March 2022, 147 million PCR tests have been reported as ‘processed’ through laboratories.