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 16 June 2021 to Questions 13127, 13128, 13129 and 13130, for what reasons NHS Test and Trace continues to be used instead of local public health teams for the purpose of covid-19 contact tracing.

NHS Test and Trace and local authorities work within a joint framework focused on preventing, identifying and managing local outbreaks and engaging with local communities to support effective testing, contact tracing and self-isolation. Within this framework, local public health teams have more control through community-led testing, expanded local tracing partnerships and the sharing of data, insight and analysis used to identify clusters of new infections and potential local outbreaks.