Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will provide further powers for local Directors of Public Health to undertake contact tracing in respect of covid-19.

We have no plans to do so. 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 Directors of Public Health and public health teams have 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.