Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of laboratory capacity to process covid-19 tests in (a) the Sheffield City Region and (b) England.

We have built the largest diagnostic testing industry in British history at pace. We are scaling up our testing capacity even further to 500,000 tests a day by the end of October, expanding our network of testing sites and adding new Lighthouse laboratories in Newport, Newcastle, Charnwood and Brant's Bridge to add to the existing national network. Capacity is the highest it has ever been and test sites in areas with higher prevalence will be prioritised and continue to provide higher volumes of testing.