No clear evidence of Test and Trace’s overall effectiveness

The Public Accounts Committee has said it is not clear whether the contribution of NHS Test and Trace in reducing infection levels can justify its ‘unimaginable’ costs.

NHS Test and Trace was set up in May 2020 with a budget of £22 billion. Since then it has been allocated £15 billion more: totalling £37 billion over two years. The Department of Health & Social Care justified the scale of investment, in part, on the basis that an effective test and trace system would help avoid a second national lockdown - but since its creation we have had two more lockdowns.

Now, in a slamming report, Public Accounts Committee has said that the system must ‘wean itself off its persistent reliance on consultants’, as there remains no clear evidence of it’s overall effectiveness, nor whether its contribution to reducing infection levels - as opposed to the other measures introduced to tackle the pandemic - can justify the money spent on it.

Although the speed and scale of its rollout was commended, the committee said that Test and Trace has never met the target to turn around all tests in face-to-face settings in 24 hours. Low utilisation rates - well below the target of 50 per cent - persisted into October last year.  

Furthermore, a major focus for the programme in early 2021 was the mass roll-out of rapid testing in different community settings, but there have been particular setbacks for the roll-out to schools, after Test and Trace had significantly underestimated the increase in demand for testing when schools and universities returned last September.

Meg Hillier MP, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: "The £23 billion test and trace has cost us so far is about the annual budget of the Department for Transport. Test and Trace still continues to pay for consultants at £1000 a day. Yet 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.

“DHSC and NHST&T must rapidly turn around these fortunes and begin to demonstrate the worth and value of this staggering investment of taxpayers' money. Not only is it essential it delivers an effective system as pupils return to school and more people return to their workplace, but for the £billions spent we need to see a top class legacy system. British taxpayers cannot be treated by government like an ATM machine. We need to see a clear plan and costs better controlled."