Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the proportion of people who will be unable to use the NHS covid-19 app because (a) they do not have a mobile phone and (b) their mobile phone does not have the technology to download or run the app.

The Office for National Statistics’ data indicates that in 2019, 79% of people aged 18 and over in the United Kingdom had a smartphone. This means that for England and Wales around 9.95 million adults do not have a smartphone device and therefore cannot use the National Health Service COVID-19 app.

Estimates using the latest data from Apple and Google indicate that 87% of iOS smartphone users and 93% of Android smartphone users in the UK currently have access to a smartphone that is able to install a version of the operating system with the contact tracing technology the NHS COVID-19 app uses. This means over 33.5 million people in England and Wales are able to download and use the NHS COVID-19 app if they wish and around 3.83 million people in England and Wales do not have a smartphone with the software that is able to support the NHS COVID-19 app.

Over 19 million people have already downloaded the app. People who use the app are protecting those who cannot or do not want to use it.