Covid-19 Update

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The situation in Bolton is very serious, and all four of the requests from my hon. Friend are rightly made. He is pressing the case, as he should, and perhaps I should meet him to see what progress we can make on all these cases.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

Despite the likes of me warning last month about test lab capacity problems, the Government could not get a grip of their supposedly world-beating system and have now instructed our testing centre in Slough to become appointment-only. The only slight snag is that, instead of being able to use the Slough site, local people are being asked to travel for hundreds of miles, including getting a ferry to the Isle of Wight. This debacle is dangerous because Slough has already had too many fatalities and has only recently come off the Government’s covid watchlist. Given that we all know that test, track and trace is the best weapon to tackle coronavirus, how does the Secretary of State for Health expect local communities to continue their hard work in overcoming this virus if his Government are failing to provide vital resources?

[Matt Hancock]

On the contrary, the fact is that we are working hard with the local authority in Slough, where just in the last week over 1,900 tests have been done. I think it would be better to work together—don’t you?