Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the statement by Lord Bethell on 23 September (HL Deb, cols 1919–32), what steps they are taking to ensure that care home staff receive (1) priority testing for COVID-19, and (2) COVID-19 test results within 24 hours.

The adult social care sector has been, and continues to be, one of our highest priorities for access to COVID-19 testing. Care homes have been prioritised for repeat asymptomatic testing. Care homes are provided with tests so they can test staff weekly and residents every 28 days. We are issuing more than 120,000 tests a day to care homes across the country.

There has been a high demand for tests and our laboratories continue to turn test results around as quickly as possible. We are bringing in new capacity, technology and staff to process tests faster. This includes increasing the number of permanent staff at existing lighthouse labs, announcing four new laboratory facilities that will join our network as well as surge labs to process more tests in the short-term.