Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to provide access to covid-19 testing for people in (a) South Leicestershire constituency and (b) England.

The Government is rapidly scaling up the national effort to boost testing capacity for COVID-19 to protect the vulnerable, support the National Health Service, and ultimately save lives. Details of this work can be found in the Government’s Testing Strategy ‘Coronavirus (COVID-19): scaling up testing programmes’, published on 4 April and available online.

As of 19 May 2020, the Government has established a network of 50 Regional Testing Sites across the UK, of which 50 are in England. The sites at Birstall Park and Ride in Leicestershire and the RICOH Arena in Coventry are the closest to South Leicestershire, and there are also Mobile Testing Units and home delivery testing kits available based on local need.