Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Keen of Elie on 6 August (HL7333), how many of the 20,000 prisoners and 10,000 staff at the 28 sites of the testing study have now taken up the invitation to carry out an antigen test.

In July 2020, a Covid-19 testing study commenced in 28 prisons in England. The testing programme is being conducted to help understand the spread of Coronavirus in prisons and how it is transmitted within individual establishments and across the wider estate. It is being carried out in collaboration with the University of Southampton, Public Health England, Department of Health and Social Care and National Audit Office.

The results will be used to aid the management of the virus, thereby protecting lives and reducing its spread, as well as to assist in managing any future pandemic in a prison custodial setting.

The study involves asking both prisoners and staff to volunteer to undertake antigen tests to ascertain if they are currently infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19. The study is ongoing, however the first round of testing saw 12500 tests taken. 4400 of these tests were from staff and 8100 were from prisoners.