Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what performance targets are in place for commercial providers of track and trace functions; what penalties can be imposed for failure to meet those targets; and what penalties have already been imposed for failure to meet those targets.

Contracts were awarded to Serco and Sitel to provide call handling services for the contact track and trace initiative. The contracts have been published and can be found at the following links:

https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/c23fdfaf-d1f2-4d8c-a0cd-6b6f35793ccd

https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/7645e3ef-ce16-4cae-8932-1eb6521a50cb

Contractual penalties are often unenforceable under English law so they were not included in test and trace contracts with Serco or Sitel. Sitel and Serco are approved suppliers on the Crown Commercial Service contact centre framework and the contracts have standard performance and quality assurance processes in place. Some information on Key Performance Indicators and service levels has been redacted from these published contracts as it is considered to be commercially sensitive.

The contracts have break clauses in them, meaning if the company does not meet required service levels we may cancel the contract and reclaim our money.