COVID-19 test for international travel: FOI release

Information requested

In reference to a previous freedom of information request - 202100217931:

• If you don’t regard CTM as a private company what do you regard them as?
• Who selected CTM to be the provider and what was the cost of the contract, does CTM receive a payment for each test of does the Scottish Government receive a one off payment for the contract or payment for each test supplied to the traveller.

Response

Corporate Travel Management (CTM) are a private company. The UK Government (UKG) are the principle contract owners and managers of the Managed Quarantine Service (MQS) and procurement of the public provider for test kit booking. CTM were awarded the contract to provide the booking process for hotel quarantine and testing kit packages.

This is a formal notice under Section 17 of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not hold the information relating to the procurement of the public provider. We would suggest contacting the UK Government through the UK Department of Health and Social Care for further information on the procurement process.

The Scottish Government has not received any income from the Managed Quarantine programme or test kit booking contract.

We currently only allow travellers to use NHS tests, arranged through the CTM booking portal, as they are the highest quality with established data flows into NHS boards and samples are sequenced to ensure early detection of variants of concern

We are exploring ways to allow private testing for travellers coming to Scotland provided we are confident in the flow of data into contact tracing services and that all positive test results are analysed to identify any variants of concern.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.