Nicola Sturgeon denies Scotland is stuck with broken UK testing system despite 'intermittent frustrations'

Nicola Sturgeon said Scotland is not stuck with a testing system that doesn’t work despite “intermittent frustrations” with delays involving the UK Government’s testing infrastructure.

The UK testing is working despite 'intermittent concerns', Nicola Sturgeon has said.

The First Minister said she had “no interest” in getting involved in a “spat” with the UK Government over the Scottish Government’s criticism around tests being diverted away from the Glasgow lighthouse laboratory over the weekend to avoid capacity problems.

Following the release of a low number of positive cases, Ms Sturgeon said the delays were due to issues with the system, something the UK Government had called “categorically untrue”.

Speaking at her daily coronavirus briefing, the First Minister said she believed the UK Government had not disagreed with the “substance” of her criticism and instead disagreed with how “we’ve described that”.

She said: "The statement I saw from them recognised that a large number of tests have been diverted from the Glasgow lighthouse laboratories to lighthouse laboratories elsewhere in the UK. That’s what I am saying and that appears to be what they are agreeing with.

"I have got no interest in getting into a spat with anybody about this, but it is vital, equally, that I am straight and transparent about my understanding of where any issues are and what we are doing to sort those out.”

Ms Sturgeon explained that it was not possible for the Scottish Government to simply “hive off” parts of the testing system that is not working and operate it outwith the UK-wide system.

Explaining the UK’s system is an “integrated system”, the First Minister said devolved governments including Scotland had decided to run with that type of Test and Protect system due to economies of scale.

She said: "You can’t just pick one part of that system to hive off easily and we made decisions at the outset as other UK nations did that that integrated system UK-wide in terms of economies of scale, access to the consumables you need, that was the right way to do it.

"You cannot simply just pick off pieces of that, but we are working to try to integrate as we go along the NHS Scotland system into that, so it does become more possible to transfer from one to the other.”

Ms Sturgeon denied that Scotland was stuck with a broken system and insisted the system worked as intended despite “intermittent frustrations”.

The First Minister said: "The system does work. We have intermittent frustrations around the turnaround time for testing, but the system does work and I am not going to stand here and suggest otherwise.

"But equally I am not going to shy away from being open and upfront when we’re having frustrations about the speed at which part of the system is working.

"I’ve done it before, we’ve worked with the UK Government to resolve it and we will do the same this time.

"People should have confidence in the testing part of it and in the protect part of it which is our contact tracers getting to work once a positive result goes into the system.”

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