Covid-19 Update

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

My Lords, there is very wide access to tests. Anyone who wants a test can apply for one today and, in almost any location in the country, will get one this afternoon. Whole-population testing is not the Government’s strategy, because testing at this level of prevalence would throw up more danger of wrong results than positive results. In terms of private and university labs, I absolutely pay tribute to the Crick, the University of Birmingham, the University of Cambridge and all other university and private labs that have contributed to the test and trace programme.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD) [V]]

I am a councillor in Cleckheaton, where there was a significant outbreak in a meat-processing factory, with 165 positive cases identified. The Secretary of State has, rightly, praised the local response. However, the national testing response has been described as “shambolic”, and it hindered an effective local response. What has been learned from the incident? Apart from belatedly sorting data-sharing, how will government actions change as a result?

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Baroness talks of an incident that I do not know the details of, but I do not deny that we are on a learning curve. We will publish new guidelines tomorrow on our local outbreak response; we are publishing guidelines on the opening of venues for 4 July; and we are working extremely hard to stitch together much better relations between the centre, where a lot of the data inevitably ends up in a big system, and the insight of local actors in local PHE, local infection, NHS and local authority bodies. This has been happening for many weeks and we have already made huge progress, but there is still more to do.