Re: Test and Trace to receive extra £15,000,000,000
Test and Trace 'no clear impact' despite £37bn budget - Public Accounts Committee report
House of Commons Public Accounts Committee
COVID-19: Test, track and trace (part 1)
Forty-Seventh Report of Session 2019–21
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56340831
The Public Accounts Committee said NHS Test and Trace was set up on the basis it would help prevent future lockdowns - but since it creation there had been two more.
The MPs' report questioned:
- An over-reliance on consultants with some paid more than £6,600 a day
- A failure to be ready for the surge in demand for tests seen last September
- Never meeting its target to turn around tests done face-to-face within 24 hours
- Contact tracers only having enough work to fill half their time even when cases were rising
- A splurge on rapid tests with no clear evidence they will help
Committee chairwoman Meg Hillier said it was hard to point to a "measurable difference" the test-and-trace system had made.
The cross-part group of MPs was looking at spending on all elements of testing and tracing.
Not all of the money has been allocated yet. But the bulk of it is going on the lab-based PCR testing system, which includes the hundreds of local testing centres and network of mega-labs across the UK to process the tests.
Some £10bn has been set aside for rapid testing, which is currently being used in schools as well as being sent to employers.
The committee acknowledges significant investment was needed to set up the system at speed after the pandemic struck. But the committee criticised an over-use of consultants, saying it needed to "wean itself off its persistent reliance on consultants" which were costing an average of £1,100 a day each and some of whom had been paid more than £6,600 per day. On last count, there were still
2,500 being used, the MPs said.
The complexity of the system was also laid bare with news that it had involved more than
400 contracts being signed with 217 different suppliers. Some
70% of the value of those contacts were directly awarded rather than being put out to tender. But the MPs said the investment had helped to massively increase testing capacity. When the pandemic started the UK could only process about 3,000 tests a day, but that had increased to more than 800,000 by January.
The committee pointed out that while capacity has grown, the system has still never met its target to turnaround all tests in a face-to-face setting in 24 hours. And it was found lacking at the crucial point in September when there was a surge in demand for testing.
By contrast, contact tracers have been under-used with just half of time spent working on cases in October.
Dr Billy Palmer, of the Nuffield Trust think tank, said:
"The promise of a world-beating test-and-trace system has just not materialised, and the eye-watering sums of public money poured into this system are set to increase even further."
TnT has been an almost complete waste of an enormous amount of money, having achieved nothing of significance, failing to halt the spread of the virus and merely maintaining a manipulated record of tests .....
With "Disastrous" Dido in charge, TnT was always going to be an expensive failure .....