Covid-19 Update

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Monday 5th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab) [V]]

In Salford, the case numbers have now risen above 250 per 100,000. As well as this case uploads programme issue today, our local contact tracing programme is having to wait on average four days for data from the national system, and in the worst cases seven to nine days. That is creating unacceptable delay to contact tracing. In August, Baroness Harding said that we would have a contact tracing system that was “local by default”, so what is the Secretary of State doing to make sure that data gets to local authorities in a timely way so that it can be followed up by genuinely local contact tracing systems under the control of our local directors of public health?

[Matt Hancock]

This is the goal, as the hon. Member sets out, and reducing the times for those transfers is very important, and making sure that the transfers happen effectively and in an automated and cohesive way is very important. But the approach that she sets out of using the national system to do the first attempts at contacting people—to contact those whom it is easy to contact—and then use the local system to contact those where it is more difficult, and where boots on the ground can help, is the approach that we are taking to make sure that we can get that join-up as effectively as possible.