Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assesment has been made of funding and creating extra capacity in (1) NHS, (2) private, and (3) other laboratories, before 31 March 2021.

HM Treasury approved £22 billion of spending this year for the NHS Test and Trace programme. This covers testing to meet demand over the winter. We are providing an additional £7 billion for NHS Test and Trace to support increased testing, including community testing and ongoing improvements to contact tracing. Eighty per cent of this will be directly spent on laboratories, tests and testing kits.