Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to give local authorities timely access to (a) SAGE and COBRA planning assumptions and (b) the NHSX covid-19 data warehouse to enable authorities to coordinate effectively their covid-19 response.

The Government is working closely with local communities to undertake contingency planning so we can ensure the public are kept safe, and any tragic loss of life is handled with the utmost respect and care. As the Government continue to learn more about the outbreak, and potential future measures that may be needed, we will set out those plans to local resilience forums.

The planning assumptions critically depend on the response the Government takes to mitigate the effect of the outbreak, and we are working with the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and others to develop assumptions that reflect those actions and that those assumptions are shared with the local level as soon as possible.

The National Health Service COVID-19 Data Store securely assimilates and protects all of the accurate, real-time information in England necessary to inform strategic and operational decisions in response to the current pandemic. It is available to use for SAGE planning, and the information feeds into relevant COBRA dashboards. Furthermore, there have already been a number of NHS Data Store COVID-19 requests from local authorities submitted and approved for public health responses.