Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Blackburn with Darwen and Bradford) Regulations 2020 Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Blackburn with Darwen and Bradford) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Blackburn with Darwen and Bradford) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020 Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Blackburn with Darwen and Bradford) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2020

Matt Western Excerpts

Monday 21st September 2020 General Committees

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Lady, who is a very experienced parliamentarian, is encouraging me to nail my colours to the mast, and I will.  Yes, I believe we are. The Prime Minister has been very clear that there will be 500,000 tests across the pillars by the end of October. That is a very clear target, and it is one that he intends to meet, just as we met the 100,000-tests target. It was very difficult to do that, but we did it, and I am confident that we will meet this target. In this place, it is sometimes easier to set very low targets, because we know we will hit them. That is not the way of the Prime Minister or my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who wants to set ambitious targets because he knows that if we meet them, we will be delivering what we need.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

The Minister is making thorough points, but we are all keen to understand the capacity. Certain numbers are claimed, and perhaps, as he just said, there will be 500,000 at the end of October—we will see—but there is a difference between claimed capacity and real, delivered capacity. As I said in a previous Delegated Legislation Committee, yesterday I went to the testing centre in Coventry, which supplies Coventry and Warwickshire. It is a large facility; I do not know how many facilities there are of an equal size across the UK—perhaps the Minister would confirm that in writing to me in the next couple of days. Given that only 16 tests are done in one hour, over a 10-hour period that is 160 tests. If we factor that up, even if there were 100 testing centres of that size, that is not a huge quantity, compared with the 500,000 the Minister is claiming. Perhaps the Minister can respond in writing; it is unfair to ask him to give an answer now.

[Edward Argar]

I will respond briefly to the hon. Gentleman. I am happy to get back to him in writing, and I will try to get that number for him.

[Matt Western]

Related to that, on the capacity in the labs, would the Minister provide the figures that are available for real capacity on the ground, and the lab capacity, which I think probably is the bottleneck?

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Regardless of the capacity in car parks or testing centres, there is a limited value to doing multiple tests if they are not processed in the lab in a timely fashion because of the bottleneck of lab capacity. That is possibly why his test centre is seeing fewer people than it would have the physical capacity to process if the lab capacity were not a challenge.

My recollection, which is a couple of weeks out of date, is that the capacity to process the tests was about 165,000 for community testing across all pillars and all types of test—the swab test as well as the antibody test. In that 500,000, there are multiple pillars. The capacity to process tests and the tests done were the same, and were, I think, about 165,000 a few weeks ago. We are using the capacity that we have, but it is constrained in the labs. I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman to clarify that. I will check the exact question that he posed when I see the transcript of this debate, and I will try to give him as direct and detailed answer as I can to exactly what he said.

[Matt Western]

So 165,000?

[Edward Argar]

Yes.

The final thing that I was going to touch on before concluding was something raised by the shadow Minister. Again, I do not have the stats on a localised level to hand, but if I can get them I will write to her. She raised the fixed-penalty notices and offences within that area. I do not have up-to-date, detailed stats for that exact area, but if I can obtain them, I am of course happy to write to her. I reiterate my gratitude to all Committee members, local councillors, local authorities and the people in the affected areas for their forbearance with the challenging restrictions to protect people.