The Government’s flagship £22 billion Test and Trace scheme “wins the prize for the most wasteful and inept public spending programme of all time,†a former Treasury chief said today.
Lord Macpherson gave the damning verdict as ministers hit back at a scathing report by the Commons public accounts committee into the scheme whose cost is set to rise to a “staggering†£37 billion.
He tweeted: “Th(is) wins the prize for the most wasteful and inept public spending programme of all time.
“The extraordinary thing is that nobody in the government seems surprised or shocked. No matter: the BoE (Bank of England) will just print more money. #soundmoneyâ€.
The peer, who was Permanent Secretary at the Treasury from 2005 to 2016 and worked on 33 Budgets and 20 Spending Reviews, intervened after the PAC committee said in a report that there is “no clear evidence†that Test and Trace contributed to a reduction in coronavirus infection levels.
However, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps rejected the claim, insisting that common sense made it obvious that the scheme had had an impact given the huge numbers of people told to self-isolate after coming into contact with someone with the virus.
He told Sky News: “It certainly hasn’t been cheap fighting coronavirus but it has absolutely been necessary.
“9.1 million people have been contacted by Test and Trace. These are people who otherwise would be wandering round often unaware that they had coronavirus and spreading it around further.
“Whatever the coronavirus experience we have had as a nation, good or bad, it would have been one heck of a lot worse if we didn’t have a Test and Trace system which has contacted so many people and prevented the disease spreading further.â€
But Meg Hillier, Labour chairwoman of the cross-party PAC committee, urged the Government to justify the “staggering investment of taxpayers’ moneyâ€.
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The committee said ministers had justified the vast expenditure on preventing a second national lockdown, but noted England is currently living under its third period of widespread restrictions.
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 £6,624 per day.
The PAC said the programme does publish a significant amount of weekly data, including some that shows full compliance with the self-isolation rules relied upon by the scheme can be low.
But 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 programmeâ€.
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 capacityâ€.
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 employs 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 DHSC (Department of Health and Social Care) is still paying such amounts - which it considers to be ‘very competitive rates’ to so many consultants,†the report said.
Baroness Harding, though, rejected the criticism that the scheme had failed to have a major impact.
She said: “We do and have done more tests per 100,000 population than any other comparable country in Europe.
“Just yesterday, 1.5 million tests were conducted. We should be proud of that.â€
Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Budget last week included an additional £15 billion for Test and Trace, taking the total bill to more than £37 billion over two years.
Shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Rachel Reeves said the report shows the significantly outsourced system has “failed the British people and led our country into restrictive lockdown after lockdownâ€.