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 additional extent to which secondary care services for prisoners, including diagnostic fluid tests, are being performed by primary care staff within prisons due to the increasing use of remote outpatient consultations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and what assessment he has made of the potential need to transfer resources allocated for these services to providers of healthcare within prisons.

We have made no such assessments. Primary care teams in prisons are working with their counterparts in secondary care to ensure people in prisons are able to access the care they need during the COVID-19 pandemic, including through telemedicine where appropriate.