Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 30 March 2021 to Question 174248, on Coronavirus: Screening, for what reason rapid covid-19 testing kits were not available to early years and nursery practitioners prior to March 2021.

Prior to January rapid testing kits were available to early years staff via the community testing programme. Since January we have offered early years staff in schools-based and maintained nursery schools access to home lateral flow device test kits for twice weekly testing. In March, this was expanded to include all staff in private, voluntary and independent nurseries, as well as the households, childcare and support bubbles of all staff and children in early year settings.