Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the letter to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care from Strategic Coordinating Group Chairs from Isle of Wight, Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Thames Valley of the 28 August, if he will take steps to resolve the lack of Pillar 2 testing capacity within days rather than the six-week timescale suggested by his Department; and if he will make a statement.

HM Treasury has approved £22 billion of spending this year for the NHS Test and Trace Programme. This covers the scale up of testing to meet demand over the winter. We are providing an additional £7 billion for NHS Test & Trace to support increased testing, including community testing, and ongoing improvements to contact tracing. 80% of this will be directly spent on labs, tests and testing kits. We’ve already built the largest Coronavirus testing capacity in Europe, up from 2,000 tests a day in March, to our current capacity of over 800,000 test a day

We are working night and day to deliver an ever more effective testing system, increasing the availability of tests and the ease of access. We have established 6 Lighthouse labs, and have increased the number of testing sites to over 800, and a ‘mega lab’ in Leamington Spa capable of processing an additional 300,000 tests each day.