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Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Rishi Sunak ‘refused to pay people more to self-isolate during Covid'
Rishi Sunak refused to pay people more to self-isolate during the pandemic, the inquiry into the crisis has heard. Baroness Harding, the former head of NHS Test and Trace, said the then-chancellor rejected proposals to pay people more to isolate 'at every opportunity' while he was chancellor. 'There was an intransigence to that, that I think was very sad,' she told the Covid Inquiry. In September 2020, the government announced that people would be required to self-isolate by law. A £500 package of support was put in place for people on low incomes who could not work from home and would lose pay as a result. But in her witness statement to the inquiry, Baroness Harding said: 'The UK spent proportionally much less than other developed countries enabling disadvantaged people to self-isolate. 'If we had allocated more of the NHS Test and Trace budget to isolation support, I strongly suspect that fewer would have died and infection rates would have been lower, with all the benefits that would have brought.' Asked whether she felt she held any responsibility for the way the Test and Trace budget unfolded, she replied: 'It's certainly the thing that I wish I had succeeded in persuading ministers to do. 'We had the money in the budget, we didn't spend all of our budget, and I also think that spending more on self-isolation would have reduced the need for testing. 'But I wasn't the decision-maker – the decision-maker in this was the chancellor and at every opportunity, from June onwards, the chancellor rejected the proposals. And, in the end, that was not in my control.' Summarising her written evidence, Sophie Cartwright KC, the counsel to the inquiry, told the hearing that, amid low take-up of self-isolation when the support system came into place in September 2020, the Baroness 'continued to champion for more to be done' but felt on occasion like she was 'banging her head against a brick wall'. Baroness Harding said: 'The modelling showed that the best way to get an operationally effective test and trace system that would reduce the rate of infection and enable us to get back to a more normal life was to encourage more people to come forward for testing. 'And that the data told us that people weren't coming forward for testing because they were scared of the consequences of isolation. To be honest, it was intensely frustrating. 'And what you see through the paper trail – I found it quite distressing reading it, to be honest – because we did try really hard to persuade ministers that this would be a good thing, not just for the individual wellbeing of those disadvantaged people, but also economically – this was one of the ways you could have had less economic harm for the country as a whole. 'And I think that the chancellor, particularly, this was a point of principle for him. 'I don't think there was any amount of data and analysis that I could have put that would have changed his mind – it was a point of principle that he didn't want to create an additional welfare benefit. 'Now I do appreciate this is a complex thing... there is a policy conundrum there, but what I was unable to achieve was any substantive engagement in how to mitigate that policy problem and to recognise that actually, the policy problem of not supporting the vulnerable to isolate was a much bigger one. 'You can hear my frustration as I say it now, there was an intransigence to that that I think was very sad.' Meanwhile, Baroness Harding was asked about Test and Trace needing to put all communications out through Downing Street. She said that, in a future pandemic, a public health agency should be able to have deep expertise 'but also permission to speak', adding: 'Trust in a system like this is its most important quality and I would be first to say that we could have done better at building society's trust in this.' Ms Cartwright replied: 'I think you detailed that request for you to essentially directly communicate on those issues was refused, and essentially, you ended up feeling like NHS Test and Trace became the whipping boy.' Baroness Harding replied: 'Yes.' The inquiry continues. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Daily Mirror
22-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Mirror
Matt Hancock gives verdict on botched Covid 'test and trace' operation
Former health secretary Matt Hancock is grilled at the Covid-19 Inquiry about setting up a privatised "test and trace" service which failed to prevent repeated lockdowns Matt Hancock has defended Britain's botched pandemic 'test and trace' operation at the Covid-19 Inquiry which failed to prevent repeated lockdowns. The former Health Secretary outsourced the nation's vital contact tracing rather than beefing up existing NHS and local public health laboratories and its failure contributed to the need for further lockdown measures. The disgraced ex-minister blamed health leaders for being unable to scale up testing laboratories, insisting 'Public Health England didn't have the operational capacity to scale [up]' The Tories' privatised 'NHS Test and Trace' operation was set up in May 2020 costing £37 billion and led by Mr Hancock's friend, Tory Peer Baroness Dido Harding. Outsourcing firms like Serco were paid millions to call people and advise them to self-isolate but used agency call centre staff paid the minimum wage who were largely not medically trained. The former I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here contestant said: 'The critical thing is that we absolutely must, as a nation, be ready to expand and radically expand testing capacity. Once the test is developed, I had to do that. 'And there are critics who said that it was done in the wrong way. What matters is that it's done and it is planned for next time to be ready to be done.' PM Boris Johnson promised a " world beating" system but the Public Accounts Committee later found NHS Test and Trace failed in its main objective of breaking chains of COVID-19 transmission. A BBC investigation at the time showed only half of close contacts were being reached in some areas. Mr Hancock said Public Health England (PHE) 'proved entirely incapable of expanding that testing capacity', adding: 'It was a cottage industry and we needed industrial scale capacity'. The inquiry heard how Mr Hancock set up a contract tracing system 'from scratch' rather than providing the funding to upgrade local authority labs and facilities run by PHE. The barrister questioning Mr Hancock on behalf of the inquiry asked whether he was aware that local contact tracing systems already existed. Sophie Cartright KC said: 'Did you appreciate that, that the directors of public health within local authority is discharged and performed the role of contact tracing? There was this resource in every local authority across the United Kingdom that had the resources.' Mr Hancock responded: 'Of course I appreciated that. There was one person in each of the upper tier local authorities and therefore, around 100 people, brilliant people, I engaged with a huge number of them throughout the pandemic. But the idea that they alone could have solved this problem was, unfortunately, the wrong attitude.' Mr Hancock resigned as health secretary in 2021 after admitting breaching social distancing guidance after photos showed him in a romantic embrace with colleague Gina Coladangelo. Lack of NHS testing capacity meant testing everyone who had Covid symptoms had to be abandoned early in the pandemic once 'community transmission' was established in the UK. Mr Hancock told the inquiry: 'The doctrine that we had going into the pandemic, that was shared by most of the Western world and the World Health Organisation, was wrong. 'The advice I received from Public Health England was that we should not need or try to test at scale or contact trace at scale as soon as there was community based transmission. There was no point in testing and contact tracing any further outside of hospitals because, effectively, everybody was going to get infected. 'That was the wrong attitude and it is absolutely critical that next time there's a pandemic… we are ready to take the actions to stop it spreading and protect the most vulnerable first.' He concluded: 'The single most important thing is to conclude that the industrial scale, expansion of testing is necessary and we need to be ready to do it.'
