Covid-19 Update

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Monday 5th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

My right hon. Friend makes a really important and heartfelt plea. I have been working with the travel sector and discussing the matter with them. While the testing capacity is, as it is now, on the current technology, we have to use it for the clinically prioritised groups, but of course we would all love to see when further expansion can mean that we can use testing more broadly in the sorts of ways that she describes.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Since the beginning of this crisis, the Government’s approach has been one of central control. We are fixated on the number of tests, but is the real issue not the number of tests, but what we do with the information we get from them? Before the new restrictions were applied to County Durham, NHS Test and Trace took testing capacity out of County Durham. Is it not now time to just admit that the national system has failed? What is needed is to give responsibility directly to directors of public health, with the resources to do not only the testing, but the more important thing, which is tracing, which they are more able to do than people in national call centres?

[Matt Hancock]

We put in money, including into the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency, to do exactly that—to make sure that there is local support. He says we should follow a localised approach. That is exactly what we did in the north-east: when the seven north-east councils came to national Government, they asked for a set of interventions to be put in place, and we did that. That is exactly the sort of approach that we ought to be taking, and we will continue to do so.