Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to progress approval of the NHS National Screening Committee for the use of lateral flow tests for covid-19 which give results in thirty minutes; and what assessment that Committee made of the accuracy of the tests.

The UK National Screening Committee’s (NSC) role is to provide advice to Ministers and the National Health Service on all aspects of screening and to support implementation of screening programmes.

The NSC ‘screening’ as follows: “Screening is the process of identifying healthy people who may have an increased chance of a disease or condition. Lateral flow devices (LFDs) are used to identify positive asymptomatic individuals. LFDs are not designed to identify healthy people at increased risk of contracting COVID-19, nor are they intended to improve the health outcomes of those who are tested. Accordingly, the use of LFDs does not amount to screening and therefore their use does not fall within the remit of the NSC.