Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

What recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the NHS Test and Trace service.

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

What recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the NHS Test and Trace service.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

What recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the NHS Test and Trace service.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Whately]

I thank the hon. Member for her question and for the work that she does with the APPG, which I joined recently for a very valuable conversation. Supporting care homes through the pandemic and in the months ahead is absolutely our, and my, priority. One part of that is ensuring that they have the testing that they need. We are getting regular repeat testing to care homes. I acknowledge that the turnaround times have not been what we would have liked them to be, but those turnaround times are coming down and we are seeing a rapid improvement in performance.

[Mary Kelly Foy]

This week, the president of the Association of Directors of Public Health said that the funding is just not there for local authorities to effectively run local contact tracing. Where it has been done, at a cost to the local authority, evidence shows that local teams were more likely to be successful in contacting people compared with the national tiers 2 and 3. Can the Minister tell me why the Government keep insisting that the current track and trace system is working when public health professionals are telling them the opposite?

[Helen Whately]

I thank the hon. Member for her question. I am sure she will know that local authorities received £400 million to support them with local outbreak management. It is really important to have this coming together of the national system and the local system, where local authorities are indeed playing an important part, using their local knowledge to follow up with contact tracing, particularly for some of the contacts that are proving harder to reach.