Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of (1) the quality of NHS COVID-19 PCR tests, (2) the reasons why airlines do not accept the results of NHS tests in order to travel, (3) the additional cost for travellers of paying for privately-provided tests, and (4) which private sector companies are benefitting from these business practices.

All polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests are validated centrally and verified locally as a minimum prior to use. The results of the validation and verification are reviewed by independent subject matter experts in the field prior to laboratories testing individuals’ samples with the assays. PCR tests in all laboratories are subject to an enhanced variant of concern assurance program, facilitated by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and NHS Test and Trace.

National Health Service tests cannot be used for travel in order to preserve existing testing capacity to protect public health. Since requirements were introduced for international travel testing, the costs of testing have fallen significantly. We are committed to working with the travel industry and private providers to reduce the cost of travel testing and we have made NHS Test and Trace tests available at the market mid-point.

A list of private providers used for testing purposes is attached, due to the size of the data. Some organisations which have self-declared that they meet the Government’s minimum standards for the type of testing service they offer have opted out from publication of their details of the Government’s centrally held list.