Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what alternative steps he plans to take to identify and track the progress of new variants of covid-19 in the context of his decision to end free provision of covid-19 lateral flows tests.

We will continue to monitor cases and retain surveillance, in hospital settings in particular, including using genomic sequencing to allow insights into the evolution of the virus. We will prepare and maintain the capabilities to increase testing and other tools such as laboratory infrastructure should this be required against a new variant.