Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that powers in Schedule 21 of the Coronavirus Act 2020 will not be used to coerce people to comply with the voluntary Test and Trace scheme.

We launched the NHS Test and Trace service on 28 May 2020.

We are confident that members of the public will want to play their part in reducing the spread of the virus to keep themselves, their families and communities safe and to protect the National Health Service. This means cooperating with instructions to self-isolate. However, if we find that people are not complying with isolation instructions, we will not hesitate to introduce tougher measures.

The powers in Schedule 21 of the Coronavirus Act 2020 are not designed to be used on a large scale and cannot feasibly be used to enforce compliance with this service. We anticipate that the powers in Schedule 21 will only be used in support of the Government’s COVID-19 response in exceptional individual circumstances and will be based on an assessment carried out by a Public Health Officer.

Data about the use of powers under Schedule 21 is published every two months and can be found at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-act-report-july-2020