Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what representations they have received from (1) private companies, and (2) manufacturers, about the use of rapid COVID-19 testing kits based on the analysis of saliva.
The Government has established a number of partnerships with industry, academia, local government and others to deliver its testing programme - from companies supplying testing kits and supplies to logistics and processing partnerships.
This is a national effort and we are proud to be working with a number of partners on innovative solutions to increase capacity where it is needed and introduce larger scale testing. To do this successfully we are securing partnerships with suppliers to pursue new testing technologies and we are acquiring significant numbers of test kits and equipment.