Covid-19 Update

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I can only apologise to my noble friend for the slowness in replying to his Questions. It is not a reasonable excuse, but the Department of Health and Social Care has been overwhelmed by the pandemic. A large amount of our correspondence is behind schedule. I have worked hard to try to catch up on that, but I apologise to him sincerely for the delay. When I get back to the department tomorrow morning, I will chase it up and get him replies to his perfectly reasonable Questions.

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

In the fourth paragraph of the Statement, the Secretary of State boasts that over 10 million people were tested at least once through NHS Test and Trace. The figure for the latest week, published by the Minister’s department today, is 10,800,031—a rise of 613,000 last week, or 87,600 a day. The week before, it was 88,200 a day, and the week before that it was 95,153 a day. Why are we going backwards in testing people at least once through NHS Test and Trace?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the capacity that we have in track and trace is growing dramatically; the number of tests we have taken is going up. It is true that testing demand does fluctuate. There was a moment when universities had a very large outbreak and there was a huge amount of demand from universities, and there may well be other reasons why testing demand goes up in the future. But I reassure the noble Lord that the capacity, speed and accuracy of testing in this country are making huge progress on a day-by-day basis, and I pay tribute to those involved in the project.