Covid-19: Information Sharing with Police Forces

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I am grateful for that important question. At no point would I ever wish to cast any aspersions or slur at the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who I count as a close colleague and someone whose opinion I respect enormously. However, I was replying in response to his question about BAME communities. We are deeply involved in talking to a large number of those communities, which have traditionally been hard to reach. We are engaged with them on many levels to talk to them about how we can address the marketing challenge of getting our messages to them, how we can shape our messages so that they are fully understood, and how we can address any concerns they may have about the test and trace programme.

I can report to the noble Baroness that we have been extremely pleased by the very encouraging responses that we have had from those communities, which is why I do not think it is reasonable to assume that any particular community would be more or less suspicious of this programme than another.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

My Lords, all supplementary questions have been asked, and that brings the Private Notice Question to an end.