Jonathan Ashworth MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, responding to tonight’s Government press conference, said:

“Labour has repeatedly called for more testing, and increasing testing is an important milestone. But many would have expected the 100,000 promise to have been met by actually carrying out testing, not simply because 39,000 kits had been mailed out. Tonight’s headline figure shouldn’t count tests that hadn’t been used, or indeed, might never be used as a completed test. Ministers promised transparency – the public and NHS staff deserve clarity.

“In any event, this figure was never a strategy. We need a fully resourced testing, isolation and tracing programme and ministers should be using this lockdown time to put the fundamentals of infectious disease control in place.”