I thank noble Lords for their responses and generally for the support they offer for what we are trying to do here. As I say, for a lot of my answers I will draw from personal experience. The whole of that time was extraordinary, as we know. To my knowledge, it was the first time where you had a situation in which masses of people could be tested for something. However, it needed laboratory-based testing, and suddenly the amount of volume needed for the
general public was completely out of anyone’s imagination as regards the volume of the market. I remember trying to understand the rules at the time, as somebody who might set up such a company to do this, and I quickly found out that there were no rules, in that nobody had ever quite envisaged such a situation and the only rule that existed was around getting an ISO process, which typically took 12 to 18 months.
What the Government did there—again, I am speaking from the other side of the fence—was to create a good process of trying to funnel people, starting off with quite easy ways to get you through the funnel because they wanted to expand it as much as possible, but then effectively making it progressively harder while still trying to keep the good suppliers in the mix. By and large they did a decent job on that. I saw some providers completely gaming the system, in that they kept ticking the boxes as long as they were allowed to tick them and then as soon as it came to a hard task, for want of a better word, they folded up shop. There was definitely some of that, and the funnel sorted out some of the wheat from the chaff along the way, but at the same time I will not pretend it was a perfect process.
I say all this from sitting on the other side of the fence and having to jump through necessary hoops, but I actually think it was a decent process at the end of the day. As ever, I will come back in writing on all this, but my understanding was that it was a fairly similar process to that followed by other countries, and they are now going through a fairly similar process to regularise this.
As I said, I absolutely looked at the difference in outcomes versus existing regimes, and I am under no doubt that, if we kept the rules of the existing regimes, the supply would not have expanded in the way required at the time. On what the Government were trying to achieve, the evidence shows that they achieved a decent outcome, where, by and large, the quality outcomes were pretty good, although not perfect—the noble Baroness brought up a good example of where it definitely was not perfect. By and large, they did a decent job on that.
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That brings me to future emergency testing. Here we are no doubt reverting to the old rules, which are probably sensible where we are. Of course, the capacity in the marketplace is much greater now—I do not have the exact numbers, but I can send them—because a lot of these companies exist and there are a lot of PCR machines and other types of equipment. If there were similar circumstances again, those resources are there to be stood up pretty quickly. If it were outside those parameters—for want of a better word—we would probably need to bring in a similar type of regime again, albeit learning from the experiences, having done it once. They probably got a seven out of 10 the first time around and I hope could get an eight or nine out of 10 this time around.
I come to the regulations for the other forms of private testing—this covers a multitude of things. One of the big values from the pandemic is lateral flow, the accuracy of which has massively increased. If it were to happen again, most of the testing would be done
through lateral flow. That is not affected by the instrument because it is not laboratory based. For most forms of private testing done by companies, it is the lateral flow-type situation, which will not be regulated by this. However, where it is lab based, my understanding is that there will be a similar set of circumstances. Again, I will follow up in writing on all this. Generally, the reaction from the testing providers is that this is quite sensible—it is trying to regularise that situation.
In response to the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, I mentioned that the ISO process is quite lengthy—typically 12 to 18 months. However, typically, labs that are already established in this field add on more ISOs and qualifications to expand what they currently have, so, on that 12 to 18 months, they are not starting from zero: they have already gone a long way to begin with. The 12 to 18 months is for new providers starting from scratch. As per the answer to the previous question, if there were another pandemic in the future, we would probably have to introduce something similar again if we needed to expand the supply in new ways. Because of that and the confidence of the new providers, I think that is generally seen as sensible.
I do not have answers on the fines issued under this, so I will need to come back on that. On the numbers at the peak and now, I can say from personal knowledge that the market generally has shrunk back a lot to the bigger, established players that were there in the first place.
On Immensa, I remember this from being on the other side of the fence at the time and being angry, to say the least, on a personal basis, that there was such a set-up. It did the whole industry damage and, much more importantly, it put lots of people at personal risk. That was a very sorry episode. To do it justice, I probably need to give a detailed written follow-up, which I shall do for all these questions.
I think, and I hope, that I have covered as much as possible, and I shall follow up more on this in writing. I welcome the support of noble Lords generally for these regulations and commend them to the House.