THERE is “no clear evidence” that the £22 billion of UK taxpayers' money spent on the Test and Trace scheme has contributed to a reduction in coronavirus infection levels in England, a cross-party group of MPs has said.
Labour’s Meg Hillier, who chairs the Commons Public Accounts Committee behind a critical report, urged the UK Government to justify the “staggering investment of taxpayers’ money”.
She declared: “British taxpayers cannot be treated by Government like an ATM machine.”
The MPs said ministers had justified the vast expenditure to prevent a second national lockdown and yet England was currently living under its third.
They also urged the scheme led by Tory peer Dido Harding to “wean itself off” reliance on thousands of “expensive” consultants and temporary staff with some receiving more than £6,600 per day.
The committee said the programme did publish a significant amount of weekly data, including some that showed full compliance with the self-isolation rules relied upon by the scheme could be low.
However, it criticised the data for failing to show the speed of the process from “cough to contact” and therefore not allowing the public to judge the “overall effectiveness of the programme”.
The report stated: “There is still no clear evidence to judge NHST&T’s overall effectiveness. It is unclear whether its specific contribution to reducing infection levels, as opposed to the other measures introduced to tackle the pandemic, has justified its costs.”
The MPs also criticised the scheme for struggling to consistently match supply and demand for the service and, therefore, “resulting in either sub-standard performance or surplus capacity”.
And they said it remained “overly reliant” on contractors and temporary staff after having to initially act quickly to scale up the service rapidly.
The report said the scheme admitted in February that it still employed around 2,500 consultants, at an estimated daily rate of around £1,100, with the best paid consultancy staff on £6,624.
“It is concerning that the Department of Health and Social Care is still paying such amounts, which it considers to be ‘very competitive rates’ to so many consultants,” it noted.
Ms Hillier equated the scheme’s budget with being similar to that of the Department for Transport.
“Yet despite the unimaginable resources thrown at this project Test and Trace cannot point to a measurable difference to the progress of the pandemic and the promise on which this huge expense was justified – avoiding another lockdown – has been broken, twice.
“DHSC and NHST&T must rapidly turn around these fortunes and begin to demonstrate the worth and value of this staggering investment of taxpayers’ money.”
She added: “We need to see a clear plan and costs better controlled.”
As Professor Chris Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, warned of another “surge” in the virus later in the year, the committee called for ministers to set out how the scheme would “cost-effectively maintain a degree of readiness”.
Last week, Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Budget included an additional £15bn for Test and Trace, taking the total bill to more than £37bn over two years.
Rachel Reeves for Labour said the report showed the significantly outsourced system had “failed the British people and led our country into restrictive lockdown after lockdown”.
She added: “It underlines the epic amounts of waste and incompetence, an overreliance on management consultants, taxpayers’ cash splashed on crony contracts, all while ministers insist our NHS heroes deserve nothing more than a clap and a pay cut.”
Frances O’Grady for the TUC said the Government’s refusal to increase statutory sick pay had “massively undermined Test and Trace”.
Despite Boris Johnson pleading the UK would have a “world-beating” tracing system, experts advising the Government in the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies said in September that the testing programme was only having a “marginal” impact on transmission.
Whitehall’s spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, has also previously criticised the service.
Its report in December said not enough test results were delivered within 24 hours and too few contacts of infected people were being reached and told to self-isolate.
Some call handlers were also said to have been busy for only 1% of their paid hours in the service’s early days, rising to less than 50% in October.
Public service union Unison used the report to reiterate calls to give NHS workers a “decent” pay increase, after the Government proposed a raise of 1%.
Its head of health, Sara Gorton, said: “Billions have been frittered away. Recognising the immense effort of NHS staff during the pandemic would be a far better use of public money. It would cost a fraction too.”
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