Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people have been successfully contacted by Sitel by (a) telephone and (b) SMS since that company acquired the contract to monitor compliance with quarantine rules.

The Isolation Assurance Service (IAS) is undertaken through an existing Public Health England contract which has been formally updated and is on a rolling agreement with two-weeks’ notice. Sitel is the only company working on the IAS.

The IAS activity includes up to three calls and a text per eligible United Kingdom arrivals sampled. Between 9 June and 7 September 2020, 149,579 total calls and texts and 66,773 successful contacts were made to eligible arrivals via phone or SMS.

The spend on setting up and running the IAS to end of September 2020 was £664,000.