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 agency staff have access to home covid-19 testing kits to enable them to obtain a test result prior to their starting an assignment at a care home.

All bank and agency staff working in care homes are eligible to access weekly COVID-19 PCR testing through the care home they work in, and we have also introduced twice-weekly rapid testing with Lateral Flow Devices.

Domiciliary care workers can access weekly PCR tests via their employer.

Anyone with symptoms can access testing through the self-referral portal system.