Test and Trace has had ‘no clear impact’ on Covid rates despite £37bn budget, MPs warn
There is no evidence to show that the government’s Test and Trace programme has had any clear impact on reducing Covid infection levels despite its £37bn budget, parliament’s spending watchdog has warned.
In a report examining funding into the scheme, the cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said spending on Test and Trace was “unimaginable” and warned the taxpayer could not be treated like an “ATM machine”.
More than £22bn has been injected into the programme so far, with Test and Trace set to receive an extra £15bn over the next financial year.
PAC chair Meg Hillier called for a “clear plan” for the scheme ahead of the Prime Minister’s plans for lifting lockdown restrictions, and costs to be “better controlled”.
“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,” said Hillier.
The spending watchdog slammed Test and Trace’s over-reliance on private consultants, with some paid more than £6,600 a day for their work on the scheme. The committee said Test and Trace must “wean itself off its persistent reliance” on the 2,500 private consultants still being employed by the scheme.
MPs also criticised the programme for struggling to match supply and demand for the service, “resulting in either sub-standard performance or surplus capacity”.
They also slammed the Test and Trace’s dependency on rapid Covid tests, despite little hard evidence over their accuracy. Around £10bn has been allocated for rapid testing so far, with the 10-minute turnaround tests being deployed in schools and workplaces.
Ministers were accused earlier this week of plugging a “ridiculous policy” after it was revealed that children who receive false positives from rapid Covid tests at school must self-isolate for 10 days.
The complexity of the contact tracing system also came under fierce criticism, with PAC noting that Test and Trace had overseen more than 400 contracts being signed with 217 different suppliers. Around 70 per cent of those contracts were directly awarded rather than being publicised as a public tender.
The government has insisted the system has helped push down infection rates. Baroness Dido Harding, who was appointed head of Test and Trace last August, noted that the scheme had been built from scratch and was now doing more tests than any other comparable country.
“It is making a real impact in breaking the chains of transmission,” she said. “NHS Test and Trace is essential in our fight against Covid-19. After building a testing system from scratch, we have now carried out over 83m coronavirus tests — more than any other comparable European country — and yesterday alone we conducted over 1.5m tests.”