Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans are in place to increase the number of biomedical testing laboratories in the West Midlands to expand the national and regional capacity for identifying and responding to (a) existing and (b) future health threats.

The Department has announced a new laboratory based in Leamington Spa opening in 2021, cementing the United Kingdom as a world leader in diagnostics. When at full capacity, the laboratory will be able to process up to 300,000 polymerase chain reaction tests per day.