It isn’t too late to turn test & trace into the ‘world-beating’ system we were promised

The latest NAO report lays bare some of the key failings of the test and trace system. With the final stage of Britain’s lifting of restrictions now just weeks away, Sean O’Grady explains why it is certainly not too soon for lessons to be learned and to put things right

A working app does seem to have been developed, but its painful development last year was a saga of missed opportunities and digi-bungling (Getty)

The National Audit Office is a long-established arm of government, dating back to Victorian times and earlier, and one of the principal pillars to protect the public against waste and malfeasance in the use of taxpayers’ funds. As a body entirely independent of government, it reports to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, the most prestigious of all the backbench committees in parliament. Its latest report, and its second, into the test and trace system, is temperate and measured, but there is no mistaking the message between the understated lines. Britain’s attempts to build a working test and trace system have failed – though that has been apparent to even a casual observer for some time.

A working app does seem to have been developed, but its painful development last year was a saga of missed opportunities and digi-bungling. The vast budget of £22bn has in fact been underspent, by around £9bn, and the system built has been only partially effective. A disappointing number of Covid tests are even notified to the authorities (about one in seven), or result in isolation and tracing and isolation of contracts (and the Covid test and trace kit reporting guidelines could be much clearer). Cooperation with public health officials in local authorities has been patchy and disappointing. Targets have been missed.

As so often, the official response is a reorganisation. NHS Test and Trace is to be subsumed into a new UK Health Security Agency – despite public health being a devolved matter. Meanwhile, Matt Hancock is bringing control of the NHS back into the Department of Health. As the NAO concludes, the government and NHS need to set out plans to make test and trace work, if only to deal with the next epidemic.