Recommendation 18

DHSC told us that it had tried to ensure that the market could provide valid and accurate tests, and that without its approach it would not have been able to develop the scale of testing market that it needed. We asked whether DHSC had reflected on the value of the gov.uk brand and the fact that companies listed on gov.uk could be seen as having the imprint of government approval. It accepted that stage one of the accreditation did not pose a high barrier to firms entering the market. We challenged DHSC as to whether it had understood the value of the NHS and gov.uk brands and the risk that government would be seen to endorse a company by virtue of it being named on the government website. DHSC recognised this, and confirmed that it had removed companies found not to be providing the claimed service from the gov.uk list. By 28 January 2022, DHSC had removed 264 providers from gov.uk, 111 of which were removed because they had failed their second or third stage accreditation. We queried why, given the amount of time between initial accreditation and later stages, fraudulent or poor performing companies stayed on the list potentially for several weeks before they were removed, and in this time could make money from people travelling. DHSC acknowledged that it could have put in place higher barriers to entry into the market.31