Yahoo Finance Taxpayer treated ‘like ATM’ over failed £37bn Test and Trace
The taxpayer was treated like “an ATM machine” when the Test and Trace programme was handed the equivalent of a fifth of the NHS’s annual budget, it has been claimed.
The Commons public accounts committee said the programme, which was meant bring the pandemic under control by enabling rapid testing and requiring contacts of those infected to self-isolate, had failed despite costing £37 billion.
Committee chairwoman Dame Meg Hillier told the BBC Radio 4 Today show: “In the end it massively over-promised for what it delivered and it was eye-watering sums of money.
“It is almost as if the taxpayer was an ATM machine. That lack of regard for taxpayer funding is a real concern.”
The report said that Test and Trace, which was headed by Baroness Harding, right, sent out 691 million lateral flow tests but only 14 per cent, 96 million, had results reported.
It is unknown what happened to the other kits, or whether those testing positive self-isolated or had a PCR test to confirm it. There was also an “over-reliance on consultants” that was likely to cost the taxpayer millions. A total of 2,239 consultants were on its books by April, each thought to be earning an average of £1,100 a day.
By February, only 11 per cent of Test and Trace’s contact centre staff were busy, amid reports today that one earned £4,500 while never being asked to trace a single contact. In 2020/21, it paid £3.1 billion to secure laboratory space to process PCR tests but the labs ran at only 45 per cent of capacity in the second half of the year.
Dr Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, which has been handed control of Test and Trace, said 323 million tests had been carried out across the UK and almost 20 million people contacted.
“The fact is Test and Trace is saving lives every day and helping us fight Covid by breaking chains of transmission and spotting outbreaks wherever they exist,” she said.
A government spokeswoman said: “We have built a testing network from scratch that can process millions of tests a day, more than any European country.”
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