Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of reports from local public health departments that the adequacy of the telephone script used in tracing the contacts of people who have tested positive for covid-19 affects (a) the proportion of contacts traced and (b) the compliance of those people contacted with self-isolation rules.
NHS Test and Trace adopts a continuous improvement approach to develop the scripts used by contact tracers on an ongoing basis. These have been designed by expert contact tracers at Public Health England. Local teams have access to central scripts and can adapt them to mirror the way in which they are following-up cases. This includes the use of a piloting approach to trial the impacts of alternative scripts, or adjustments within scripts, to understand whether these improve the public experience of the service.