Unsafe hands: The private companies botching Britain’s coronavirus response

Tackling the Covid-19 pandemic isn’t the first time bloated government outsourcing contracts have backfired. But, writes Miles Ellingham, it really doesn’t have to be this way

Outsourcing giant Serco has been criticised for running a test and trace system that is less effective than local public health teams (PA)

Last week a close friend fell ill, and I had to get a Covid-19 test. NHS slots were all booked up, so I bought an overpriced kit at the local pharmacy.  Having swabbed myself, I was directed to drop it off in a sealed box at a Randox Health in central London.

The Randox offices are a corporate lobby of glass and plastic, with televisions playing stock footage of doctors performing myriad vague medical procedures. The place was unstaffed but for a single receptionist talking on the phone. Every now and then, couriers hurried in looking confused, demanding a drop-off or a pick-up before being directed elsewhere. When it was time to drop off my biohazard, the receptionist walked me behind a little S-shaped alcove and I saw it… there on the floor, a little pile of sealed, untested samples strewn like socks on the rug of a child’s bedroom. The receptionist threw my sample on with the rest and I left – hoping it would find its way to the lab in Northern Ireland.  

I can’t stop thinking about that pile of samples. It feels somehow symbolic of the government’s response to coronavirus – in which billions of pounds worth of contracts have been handed out, often without any competitive tender, to private companies.