Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the remarks made by Lord Kamall on 29 November (HL Deb, col 1223), what discussions they have held to ensure that countries are not disincentivised from transparent reporting of variants to the World Health Organisation.

On 29 November 2021, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care chaired a meeting of G7 Health Ministers to discuss the spread of the Omicron variant. G7 Health Ministers praised the exemplary work of South Africa in detecting the variant and alerting other countries. Health Ministers committed to working with other nations to share information and ensure transparent reporting of variants.