Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason staff returning to medical practice and recruited to the track and trace service have to undergo two DBS checks.

Staff returning to medical practice through NHS England and NHS Improvement’s returner programme would have the relevant Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) and onboarding checks undertaken, through NHS England’s third-party supplier (Capita).

Recruitment of clinical staff to the NHS Test and Trace service is managed by NHS Professionals. NHS Professionals does make use of the DBS Update Service and for some staff joining NHS Test and Trace, the Update Service was used. Upon receipt of a DBS Disclosure, NHS Professionals’ compliance team would have assessed the disclosure and where appropriate, a check with the DBS Update service would have been completed, therefore avoiding the need to complete a repeat check.

As NHS England and NHS Improvement is a separate entity from NHS Professionals, there may have been occasions where two DBS checks may have been required, as a DBS check cannot be transferred between organisations.