Coronavirus - do you trust the UK Government to make the right decisions ?

Coronavirus - do you trust the UK government to make the right decisions?

  • Yes

    Votes: 130 23.9%
  • No

    Votes: 414 76.1%

  • Total voters
    544
There are still many unanswered questions where the £12Billion has been allocated for the (not so) ‘world beating test and trace programme.

As Serco's share price soars, government accused of "shovelling huge sums of public money to a handful of outsourcing companies without competition, rigour or accountability“

‘Failing’ Serco won another £57m COVID contract without competition‘

‘Outsourcing giant Serco was given a £57 million contract to run COVID testing centres across the UK without any competition, openDemocracy can reveal’

‘the government has renewed an earlier contact-tracing contract – worth a reported £410 million – despite a swelling chorus of criticism of the scheme’s failings’
‘Sage, the government’s scientific advisory team, has warned that “engagement” problems and “delays”means the track and trace system is only having a “marginal impact” on reducing the spread of the virus. Serco’s unscheduled trading statement Friday sent its shares soaring’

‘All these contracts were awarded without a competitive tender process’
‘The contracts were only published last week – despite rules stipulating that contracts must be made public within thirty days’

‘The government refused to answer questions in Parliament this monthabout when the contact-tracing contract was due to be renewed. openDemocracy’s investigationsrevealed that the contract had been renewed on 24 August for a period of eight weeks’

Revealed: ‘Failing’ Serco won another £57m COVID contract without competition
 
Great info that Steve, cheers.

The test and trace is about more than just saving lives from the virus, it has a positive effect on the economy too. This is the win win that we need.

I fear though people just aren't recognising it. Possibly because we just don't have a good enough system in place ourselves, so no-one is actually seeing the benefit of it.
 
Great info that Steve, cheers.

The test and trace is about more than just saving lives from the virus, it has a positive effect on the economy too. This is the win win that we need.

I fear though people just aren't recognising it. Possibly because we just don't have a good enough system in place ourselves, so no-one is actually seeing the benefit of it.

Agree with all you have said.

The problem is, I believe, we are using software provided by other countries, maybe USA models, that just don't cut it. We are then paying over the odds for modification and the numbers are appalling. You would think with all the software experience base we have in UK the government would be use it and derive a system that is foolproof, the data required doesn't appear to be too difficult to put together and should be relatively straight forward. We would save the country a fortune in doing so and would create the much needed jobs for those who will soon be out of work in the current climate.
 
Great info that Steve, cheers.

The test and trace is about more than just saving lives from the virus, it has a positive effect on the economy too. This is the win win that we need.

I fear though people just aren't recognising it. Possibly because we just don't have a good enough system in place ourselves, so no-one is actually seeing the benefit of it.
This an interesting article that examines how the government’s Covid response including secretive contracts have impacted on the UK’s ability to address this pandemic. This has cost lives and impacted the economy and our ability to recover. Moreover, the apparent winners are those ’select’ organisations and individuals who have been awarded contracts with no apparent procurement protocols in place. The article also questions certain appointments and the implications for the future.

The full article is worth reading, I have outlined the key points with headings…

Bypassing the NHS and handing crucial services to corporate executives has led to the catastrophic failure of test and trace

‘The government's secretive Covid contracts are heaping misery on Britain'

£12Billion:
'The new surge in the coronavirus, and the restrictions and local lockdowns it has triggered, are caused in large part by the catastrophic failure of the test-and-trace system. Its £12bn budget has been blown, as those in charge of it have failed to drive the infection rate below the critical threshold'

Centralisation:
'This centralisation is perhaps the hardest aspect to understand. All experience here and abroad shows that local test and trace works better. While, according to the latest government figures, the centralised system currently reaches just 62.6% of contacts, local authorities are reaching 97%. This is despite the fact that they have been denied access to government data, and were given just £300m, in contrast with the £12bn for national test and trace. Centralisation may be a catastrophe, but it does enable huge contracts for multinational corporations'

Leadership:
‘The government’s irrational obsession with the private sector is symbolised by its appointment of Dido Harding to run NHS test and trace’
'Having demonstrated, to almost everyone’s dissatisfaction, that she was the wrong person for the job, Harding has now been given an even bigger role, as head of the National Institute for Health Protection, to run concurrently with the first one. This is the government’s replacement for Public Health England, which it blames for its own disasters’

'Like so much surrounding this pandemic, the identity of Harding’s team at NHS track and trace was withheld from the public, until it was leaked to the Health Service Journal last month. Clinicians were astonished to discover that there is only one public health expert on its executive committee'

Contracts & No Targets:
'The test-and-trace system might be a public health fiasco, but it’s a private profit bonanza. Consultants at one of the companies involved have each been earning £6,000 a day. Massive contracts have been awarded without competitive tendering. Astonishingly, at least one of these, worth £410m and issued to Serco, contains no penalty clause: even if Serco fails to fulfil its terms, it gets paid in full. Serco has indeed missed its targets, achieving an average by September of only 58.6% of contacts traced, against the 80% it was meant to reach'

'Though this is an issue of great public interest, the contracts have been shrouded in secrecy. We have not been allowed to discover how the contractors were chosen, or why the government has repeatedly appointed them without competition. Time and again, in contracts for both the test-and-trace programme and protective equipment'

Lack of Transparency & Anti Corruption:
'What is this about? Why is failure rewarded? Why are contracts issued with so little accountability or transparency? There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation, but you might expect the government’s Anti-Corruption Champion to investigate. Or perhaps not. He is John Penrose MP, Dido Harding’s husband'

PHE:
'The anti-corruption champion sits on the advisory board of a thinktank called 1828. It campaigned ferociously against Public Health England, on the grounds that its efforts to regulate junk food and reduce obesity “curtail personal liberty and undermine parental responsibility”: a standard industry talking point. It called for the body to be scrapped: this happened, and Penrose’s wife is running its replacement'

In Summary:
'The government has bypassed the lean and efficient NHS to create an outsourced, privatised system characterised by incompetence and failure. The system’s waste is measured not just in pounds, but in human lives. It is measured in mass unemployment, economic crisis, grief, isolation, long-term illness and avoidable death. So much for the efficiencies of privatisation'

 
Johnson doesn't know his own numbers, he just claimed we're testing more people than any other country in Europe (we're still counting multiple tests on the same person, plus tests sent out in the post it would seem) - he said we have tested 26 million people, and then backtracked a sentence later saying we have conducted 26 million tests... which is it?
 
This an interesting article that examines how the government’s Covid response including secretive contracts have impacted on the UK’s ability to address this pandemic. This has cost lives and impacted the economy and our ability to recover. Moreover, the apparent winners are those ’select’ organisations and individuals who have been awarded contracts with no apparent procurement protocols in place. The article also questions certain appointments and the implications for the future.

The full article is worth reading, I have outlined the key points with headings…

Bypassing the NHS and handing crucial services to corporate executives has led to the catastrophic failure of test and trace

‘The government's secretive Covid contracts are heaping misery on Britain'

£12Billion:
'The new surge in the coronavirus, and the restrictions and local lockdowns it has triggered, are caused in large part by the catastrophic failure of the test-and-trace system. Its £12bn budget has been blown, as those in charge of it have failed to drive the infection rate below the critical threshold'

Centralisation:
'This centralisation is perhaps the hardest aspect to understand. All experience here and abroad shows that local test and trace works better. While, according to the latest government figures, the centralised system currently reaches just 62.6% of contacts, local authorities are reaching 97%. This is despite the fact that they have been denied access to government data, and were given just £300m, in contrast with the £12bn for national test and trace. Centralisation may be a catastrophe, but it does enable huge contracts for multinational corporations'

Leadership:
‘The government’s irrational obsession with the private sector is symbolised by its appointment of Dido Harding to run NHS test and trace’
'Having demonstrated, to almost everyone’s dissatisfaction, that she was the wrong person for the job, Harding has now been given an even bigger role, as head of the National Institute for Health Protection, to run concurrently with the first one. This is the government’s replacement for Public Health England, which it blames for its own disasters’

'Like so much surrounding this pandemic, the identity of Harding’s team at NHS track and trace was withheld from the public, until it was leaked to the Health Service Journal last month. Clinicians were astonished to discover that there is only one public health expert on its executive committee'

Contracts & No Targets:
'The test-and-trace system might be a public health fiasco, but it’s a private profit bonanza. Consultants at one of the companies involved have each been earning £6,000 a day. Massive contracts have been awarded without competitive tendering. Astonishingly, at least one of these, worth £410m and issued to Serco, contains no penalty clause: even if Serco fails to fulfil its terms, it gets paid in full. Serco has indeed missed its targets, achieving an average by September of only 58.6% of contacts traced, against the 80% it was meant to reach'

'Though this is an issue of great public interest, the contracts have been shrouded in secrecy. We have not been allowed to discover how the contractors were chosen, or why the government has repeatedly appointed them without competition. Time and again, in contracts for both the test-and-trace programme and protective equipment'

Lack of Transparency & Anti Corruption:
'What is this about? Why is failure rewarded? Why are contracts issued with so little accountability or transparency? There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation, but you might expect the government’s Anti-Corruption Champion to investigate. Or perhaps not. He is John Penrose MP, Dido Harding’s husband'

PHE:
'The anti-corruption champion sits on the advisory board of a thinktank called 1828. It campaigned ferociously against Public Health England, on the grounds that its efforts to regulate junk food and reduce obesity “curtail personal liberty and undermine parental responsibility”: a standard industry talking point. It called for the body to be scrapped: this happened, and Penrose’s wife is running its replacement'

In Summary:
'The government has bypassed the lean and efficient NHS to create an outsourced, privatised system characterised by incompetence and failure. The system’s waste is measured not just in pounds, but in human lives. It is measured in mass unemployment, economic crisis, grief, isolation, long-term illness and avoidable death. So much for the efficiencies of privatisation'

Unsurprisingly then that one of the aims of the current government is to stop Judicial Review being used to challenge government decisions and examine them in court.
Boris Johnson told to keep ‘populist hands’ off judiciary

How long before the government starts vilifying 'lefty lawyers' associated with the Good Law Project...
Top ministers urged Priti Patel to stop attacks on 'activist lawyers'

When it attacks 'lefty lawyers', this government takes aim at the rule of law | David Gauke
 
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Johnson doesn't know his own numbers, he just claimed we're testing more people than any other country in Europe (we're still counting multiple tests on the same person, plus tests sent out in the post it would seem) - he said we have tested 26 million people, and then backtracked a sentence later saying we have conducted 26 million tests... which is it?
Probably neither...;)
Total tests by Tuesday 20th was 27, 795,752 (add 260K daily tests brings this to just over 28 million tests by end of today)
Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK
 
Probably neither...;)
Total tests by Tuesday 20th was 27, 795,752 (add 260K daily tests brings this to just over 28 million tests by end of today)
Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK
Let’s keep in mind the testing programme is more than just the number of tests, the other part of the equation is tracing and isolation. The centralised programme via Serco has failed miserably with tracing. Although it’s no surprise as they have no penalties for not achieving target
Serco has indeed missed its targets, achieving an average by September of only 58.6% of contacts traced, against the 80% it was meant to reach'
 
Fake data. Is that the new fake news is it?
It’s worth watching the Soames interview on Peston. A master class in deflection. For a while Peston was taken a back by the claims from Soames that Serco’s figures are not as reported.
 

The main thrust of this article, no clinical training, doesn't come as a surprise. The point of these contact centres is to act as first line support in a triage, dealing with the easy cases and passing along the rest to the next line of support.

NHS 24 in Scotland (GP out of hours service) and IIRC NHS 111 work the same way. That's not to say that there aren't clinical staff available, just that they don't all have to be clinically trained.
 
I have just received an update from Jolyon Maugham QC at The Good Law Project. They have been taking the government to task over dubious PPE contracts but, also the 'Operation Moonshot' testing programme announced by Johnson a few weeks ago. This update makes for interesting reading...

Update: 'Operation Moonshot'
'The ‘Operation Moonshot’, Government’s grand plan to develop a rapid turnaround testing programme, has predictably fizzled out into a damp squib.

In response to legal action by Good Law Project, Dale Vince, AI Diagnostics, and EveryDoctor, the Government has quietly agreed that ‘Operation Moonshot’ will be absorbed into the existing Test and Trace programme. They have also abandoned plans to spend £100 billion, a figure first revealed in the Government’s own leaked documents, on the project.

It’s a far cry from Boris Johnson’s grandstanding in Parliament just a matter of weeks ago and more proof of the mess this Government is making of the UK’s testing programme.

But call it what you like - ‘Operation Moonshot’ or Test and Trace - the Government continues to refuse to answer some really rather basic questions we have been asking for some weeks about their plans for a mass testing programme. Our lawyers have written to Government yet again to press for transparency:

  • Why were contracts for this programme awarded without any advertisement or competitive tender process?
  • Why did the Government fail to consult their own experts, the National Screening Committee over the plans for rapid testing?
  • Will tests delivered by ‘Operation Moonshot’ be free of charge, or will the public be forced to pay, as suggested by Head of Test and Trace Dido Harding?
Unless we get satisfactory answers we will, have no doubt, issue proceedings.

The basic problems with Operation Moonshot - and they are universal to everything this Government procures - are around transparency and accountability. Government is treating the taxpayer as the enemy, not entitled to know why and with whom these vast sums are being spent. We believe that is wrong - we believe it is accountable to the taxpayer for these vast sums - and we will do whatever we can to deliver that accountability'


Jolyon Maugham QC
Director of Good Law Project
 
Everytime I hear the "Moonshot" word it makes me chuckle. No surprise to see it being quietly ushered away. It was never more than grandstanding pap for the cheerleaders.

In other news I got a bit of a shock today (yeah I know) when I found myself agreeing with Dan Hodges again. I think it's the 3rd time this year.

 
Everytime I hear the "Moonshot" word it makes me chuckle. No surprise to see it being quietly ushered away. It was never more than grandstanding pap for the cheerleaders.

In other news I got a bit of a shock today (yeah I know) when I found myself agreeing with Dan Hodges again. I think it's the 3rd time this year.


Apparently Johnson has just noticed that the so called ‘world beating’ test and trace programme is not working...?! Ofcourse, he failed to mention that his ‘Operation Moonshot’ was just bulls#it!

Covid: NHS Test and Trace needs to improve, PM concedes Covid: NHS Test and Trace needs to improve, PM concedes
 
Moonshot dropped? thank {Deity} for that.
 
So Dom wanted the big fines hey. For trips to Barnard Castle and the like I imagine.

 
Apparently Johnson has just noticed that the so called ‘world beating’ test and trace programme is not working...?! Ofcourse, he failed to mention that his ‘Operation Moonshot’ was just bulls#it!

Covid: NHS Test and Trace needs to improve, PM concedes Covid: NHS Test and Trace needs to improve, PM concedes
2A2B9F9B-FA73-43B1-958B-B6D889E7A28C.jpeg
 
Everytime I hear the "Moonshot" word it makes me chuckle. No surprise to see it being quietly ushered away. It was never more than grandstanding pap for the cheerleaders.

In other news I got a bit of a shock today (yeah I know) when I found myself agreeing with Dan Hodges again. I think it's the 3rd time this year.



They seem to major in school yard clic politics.

When Johnson did the briefing last week, he mentioned by name "Steve Rotherham" at least three times as if he was his drinking mate, and how co-operative he had been on behalf of Liverpool.

Interestingly, Mr. Rotherham on the news shortly after had an entirely different view of who the chat's with government went. Clearly Johnson was trying show a 'buddy like' relationship with Mr Rotherham to pressure Burnham.

Then we had the on-going tennis match between Burnham and Johnson and the government eventually wins that arm wrestle on principle.

Then Andy Street makes proposals worded in a different manner (far from bad, seems a reasoned guy) and London hits the skids and then guess what .... friend Andy gets the 'buddy of the day' badge after frosting out Burnham and the dole out is pretty much same if not more than Burnham tried argue for.

Is hateful how Johnson 'first names' the favored ones ..... Dido, Steve, DVT !!! Did anyone heard that? Bloody DVT. Can't you get socks that prevent that? Sycophantic cronyism to the max .... oh until you fall out of favour .... usually within 48 hours.
 
They seem to major in school yard clic politics.

When Johnson did the briefing last week, he mentioned by name "Steve Rotherham" at least three times as if he was his drinking mate, and how co-operative he had been on behalf of Liverpool.

Interestingly, Mr. Rotherham on the news shortly after had an entirely different view of who the chat's with government went. Clearly Johnson was trying show a 'buddy like' relationship with Mr Rotherham to pressure Burnham.

Then we had the on-going tennis match between Burnham and Johnson and the government eventually wins that arm wrestle on principle.

Then Andy Street makes proposals worded in a different manner (far from bad, seems a reasoned guy) and London hits the skids and then guess what .... friend Andy gets the 'buddy of the day' badge after frosting out Burnham and the dole out is pretty much same if not more than Burnham tried argue for.

Is hateful how Johnson 'first names' the favored ones ..... Dido, Steve, DVT !!! Did anyone heard that? Bloody DVT. Can't you get socks that prevent that? Sycophantic cronyism to the max .... oh until you fall out of favour .... usually within 48 hours.

School yard politics is exactly what it is. This country is getting it's head flushed down the toilet in a painful version of the Grange Hill opening credits comic strip. And we know whose doing the flushing.
 
School yard politics is exactly what it is. This country is getting it's head flushed down the toilet in a painful version of the Grange Hill opening credits comic strip. And we know whose doing the flushing.

Really does feel that way .... and we have all either felt that spin off or done the spinning at some point in life either at school as you mention or in work world or indeed even within families. But at a country level? Boy oh boy.

This article splashed this morning on CNN conveys a little of that spirit but more the U turn mentality of changing course when 'friends' turn. It suggests the change from a 'walk through it all' guy to not knowing which way to turn guy.

 
Really does feel that way .... and we have all either felt that spin off or done the spinning at some point in life either at school as you mention or in work world or indeed even within families. But at a country level? Boy oh boy.

This article splashed this morning on CNN conveys a little of that spirit but more the U turn mentality of changing course when 'friends' turn. It suggests the change from a 'walk through it all' guy to not knowing which way to turn guy.


Cheers for that, I'll have a read later. It's always good to get some perspective from outside the country as well.

I don't expect there's many places showering us with praise and positives right now.
 

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