Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions Ministers in his Department have had with (a) local authority leaders and (b) public health directors on the guidance issued by his Department stating that people should not to travel into and out of (i) Kirklees, (ii) Bedford, (iii) Burnley, (iv) Leicester, (v) Hounslow, (vi) North Tyneside, (vii) Bolton and (viii) Blackburn with Darwen.

The Government has been in constant contact with local authority leaders and directors of public health to support local Covid-19 outbreak management in these areas.

The Department engages routinely with Local Authorities through our Regional Partnership teams, who have daily and weekly meetings with local authorities. The Director of Strategy & Engagement for Contain and their team meets with Local Authority Chief Executives, Directors of Public Health, the Local Government Association and Society of Local Authority Chief Executives fortnightly to discuss policy development.

On 25 May 2021, officials met the 8 Local Authorities concerned about the travel guidance. Since then we have engaged continuously with local health leads on the risks posed by new variants. We have deployed local communications to the affected areas to alert the public to advice. We worked at pace last week, recognising the risks posed by the increased case rates of the new variant in some parts of the country. As a result, we recognise that the communications were not as clear as they could have been. We will be discussing with local authority colleagues this week to make sure that everyone is clear what the expectations are and how we can improve communications going forward.