Covid-19 Update

Mark Harper Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

We are absolutely putting more resources into that local end of the contact tracing, but I stress that it is one system. I think the right hon. Gentleman has made the same category error as the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth). If we count contact tracing results from institutional settings within the local categorisation, of course the number of contacts that we reach is higher—for instance, in a care home it is very easy to reach 100% of contacts, by the nature of the setting. The hon. Member for Leicester South, who is also a very sensible fellow, tried to make that comparison, and it is not quite fair—it is not comparing apples with apples.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

The Secretary of State is right to warn against complacency, and perhaps it would be wise to remind people that we are in this for the long haul. My I ask him a question about testing? The director of testing for NHS Test and Trace has confirmed that we have testing capacity at all our testing sites, but that there is a critical pinch point in the laboratories. My director of public health, who is excellent, and a number of her colleagues in the south-west would prefer that, rather than artificially limiting access to testing sites and home testing kits, we ensured that people could take those tests locally and managed the pinch point at the laboratory end of things, because that would improve public confidence in getting testing. Is that something that my right hon. Friend could take away and look at? If he cannot do that, can he at least give me a good reason that I can take back to her about why that is not possible?

[Matt Hancock]

I entirely understand the point, and I can see the argument that is being made. The challenge is, since lab capacity is what we need more of, that if we take more swabs locally and send them in to the lab, we need to have the lab capacity to be able to turn them round. Otherwise, we get a much slower response, which means that we are not getting back to people fast enough for them to be able to act. That is the nature of the challenge, and the answer is more lab capacity, which is what we are driving through.