THE PRIME Minister has urged City of York Council to take up the Government's offer of mass coronavirus testing in the city.

Boris Johnson was speaking in the Commons after being quizzed by York Outer MP Julian Sturdy about testing and also about whether York can go straight back into Tier 1 once the lockdown ends next month.

The exchange during Prime Minister's Questions came after York's director of public health, Sharon Stoltz, said on Tuesday that York would not - as yet - be joining more than 60 other local authorities in taking up a Government offer of mass testing. She said that at this point, further information and consideration was needed.

The PM said: “I urge York Council and councils across the land to take up this offer of mass lateral flow testing. I think it’s a very, very exciting possibility….it’s one of the boxing gloves we seek to wield to pummel this disease into submission."

Mr Sturdy said afterwards: "I thought it was essential to tell the Prime Minister that York must return to the relative normality of tier 1 when the new national restrictions expire next month.

"York residents have made serious sacrifices to get our virus rate significantly below where it was when we were escalated from tier 1 to 2 pre-new lockdown, and the government has to demonstrate that the community’s resilience and self-denial will be rewarded.

"Our local economy also cannot afford a renewed period of tier 2 limbo, with the household mixing ban devastating trade.

"I also hope our city’s public health team heed the Prime Minister’s words, and proceed rapidly with their plans to introduce 15-minute lateral flow tests into York.

"I appreciate the huge effort they are already putting in, but the opportunity to return towards normality offered by quick localised mass testing has to be seized with both hands.”

The MP said earlier that local businesses needed to be able to trade as normally as possible before Christmas ‘unless we want to wake up to a New Year of shuttered high streets and steeply rising unemployment,’ and said he would be ‘very disappointed and concerned’ if York did not return to Tier 1.

The MP pressed Health Secretary Matt Hancock in the Commons to confirm York’s allocation of new rapid turnaround coronavirus tests, ‘to help the city manage the issues created by having to protect a large student population alongside permanent residents.’He said “Rapid, on-the-ground testing of this kind is essential for our community to head back towards normality.”

Earlier this week city and business leaders said mass testing was the number one priority to accelerate York’s recovery from Covid-19.

*The Prime Minister's comments have been put to City of York Council.