Test and Trace has been “a success”, its former boss has claimed, as she suggested the media was to blame for the public expecting the system to have stopped the second wave.

Baroness Dido Harding said she was “proud” of her contribution to the highly criticised organisation, arguing it had had a “material impact” on infections.

An ally of Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, her comments prompted derision from MPs on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), who accused her of spending “eye-watering amounts of money” with little effect on the course of the pandemic.

Challenged on why the £13.5 billion system had failed to avoid the need for lockdown last winter, Baroness Harding, who formally stepped down in May, said Test and Trace had only ever been intended as one of several weapons in the armoury against Covid, another being lockdowns themselves.

“I would actually argue – and I do appreciate that a lot of people listening to this might find this rather incredulous given some of the way it’s being reported – but I would actually argue that NHS Test and Trace has been a success, that it has delivered on its objectives to help break the chains of transmission, as set out in the NAO report,” said Baroness Harding.

She added: “Test and Trace has always been one of four main planks of our Covid response, not the single one.”

She said the others were non-pharmaceutical interventions in the form of lockdowns and social distancing, vaccines and better medicines for people with severe disease.

However, Greg Clark, who chairs the science and technology committee, pointed out that the Department of Health’s formal business case, presented to the Treasury last year to pitch for the unprecedented funding, had stated that NHS Test and Trace aimed to avoid the need for a second national lockdown.

Mr Clark said: “Procedure is important here. This was in the business case that requested an eye-watering sum of public money, and it was justified on the basis – I’m quoting from the NAO report – that it aims to avoid the need for a second national lockdown. That was an important contributor to getting the money.”

Baroness Harding responded: “That’s not the essence of anything I have ever said.”

Greg Clark (Con, Tunbridge Wells) was brought into the. Mr Clark was on loan from the science select committee where he has dazzled. So many committee chairs simply play to the gallery but Clark is no showboater. He’s more of a prober, setting little traps for his guests to walk into.

Clark suggested that, if it weren’t for the vaccine, we would almost certainly be into our fourth lockdown by now. He put it to Harding that Test and Trace had effectively been a waste of time. Dido disagreed. She claimed that it was never meant to be a silver bullet when it came to preventing lockdowns.

Clark jutted out his lower jaw. He scratched his head quizzically. He produced a quote from Harding’s own business plan, the one she presented to the Treasury which claimed Test and Trace would ‘avoid a second lockdown’. Harding’s face blanched. Bullseye.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/a...committee.html





"Incompetent" Harding can talk the hind leg off a donkey but, increasingly, she is being blown up by her own petard .....