Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of asking UK nationals to be tested for covid-19 before undertaking international travel.

Current clinical advice is that testing of individuals without symptoms should be used where clinically appropriate, predominantly for outbreak investigation and infection control. We continue to use the latest science and clinical advice to inform our approach. Our primary focus is symptomatic people to ensure that everyone who needs a test can get one. On that basis, we are not currently using our testing capacity to provide asymptomatic testing to support exit health monitoring for persons departing the United Kingdom for international travel.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office currently advises British nationals against all but essential international travel, with the exemption of a number of countries and territories which have been assessed as no longer presenting an unacceptably high risk to British people travelling abroad. The list of exempted destinations is under constant review.