Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what procedures his Department followed in awarding a covid-19 PCR testing contract to Randox.

All suppliers pass through a rigorous regulatory and validations process to ensure that they meet the same high-quality standards. In March 2020, a contract was awarded to Randox using Regulation 32, due to the public health emergency and the need for testing capacity. A new contract was awarded to Randox in April 2021 and in August 2021 for additional polymerase chain reaction testing on Public Health England’s National Microbiology Framework.