The UK Government’s use of private sector firms in the response to the Covid crisis has been characterised by incompetence, excessive expense, and lack of appropriate transparency relating to the awarding of contracts and the expenditure of considerable amounts of public money.

This ‘Organise’ petition calls for an urgent enquiry covering:

1. The proven rationale for continuing the use of such companies in the response to Covid.

2. Alternative strategies using central and local government bodies.

3. The processes that have been adopted in selecting and rewarding private firms for this work.

4. The evident inadequacies in the public agencies responsible for the management of the Government’s response.

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 squandered and it has failed to drive the infection rate below the critical threshold.

The Government’s commitment to a private-sector led solution has led to (i) money that could have saved lives and fed hungry children being diverted into corporate profits, (ii) inexperienced consultants and executives being appointed over the heads of qualified public servants and (iii) instead of responsive local systems, the creation of a centralised unaccountable bureaucracy that has done nothing but waste money.

All experience in the UK and overseas shows that local test and trace works better. While, according to the latest government figures, the centralised system currently reaches only 63 percent of contacts, local authorities are reaching 97 percent. This is despite the fact that they have been denied access to government data, and were given only £300m in contrast with the £12bn for national test and trace. Centralisation’s only advantage lies in the fact that is makes it easier to award lucrative contracts for multinational corporations.

Consultants at one of the companies involved have each been earning £6,000 a day.

Significant contracts have been awarded without competitive tendering. 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 percent of contracts traced against the 80 percent it was contracted to reach.

The contracts have been shrouded in secrecy. We have not been allowed to discover how the contractors were chosen, nor why the Government has repeatedly appointed them without competition. In contracts for both the test-and-trace programme and protective equipment, sums of £108m have been awarded to several companies; this is the threshold above which the Government would have to put the contracts out to tender across Europe.

Dido Harding was appointed to run the NHS Test and Trace programme. She was in charge of The Jockey Club as the Cheltenham Festival went ahead in March, despite the dangers of the virus being very apparent by that time. Some 250,000 people packed the festival. It appears to have been a super-spreader responsible for a spike in infections and deaths.

The racing connection might have been one aspect of her chequered career that could have commended her to the health secretary, Matt Hancock. Hancock, the MP for Newmarket, where the Jockey Club has major infrastructure and investments, has drawn a large proportion of his political funding from the horse-racing industry. An investigation by the Daily Mirror estimated that he had received £350,000 in donations from wealthy people in the racing business. Before the last election he announced: “I’ll always support the wonderful sport of horse racing.”

What other qualifications and experience did she have for the job?

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. There is only one public health expert on its executive committee, along with a former executive from Jaguar Land Rover, a senior manager from Travelex and an executive from Waitrose. Harding’s adviser at the agency is Alex Birtles, who, like her, previously worked for TalkTalk. She has subsequently made a further appointment to the board: Mike Coupe, an executive at another of her old firms, Sainsbury’s.

The test-and-trace system she oversees has repeatedly failed to reach its targets. Staff were inadequately trained. Patients have been directed to non-existent training centres or to the other end of the country. A vast tranche of test results was lost. Thousands of people, including NHS staff, have been left unable to work because they can’t get tests or the results of those tests.

Harding has now been given an even bigger role, as head of the National Institute for Health Protection, to run alongside her test and trace responsibilities.

There is a case for involving the Government’s Anti-Corruption Champion John Penrose, Dido Harding’s husband.

Penrose 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.” It called for the body to be scrapped: this happened, and Penrose’s wife is running its replacement (see above.) It claims that “the NHS’s record is deplorable” and proposes that it be replaced with a social health insurance system. It champions the idea of outsourcing patients to the Cayman Islands for treatment. When the thinktank was asked who its major funders were, it replied: “1828 does not disclose information regarding donations.”

Penrose and Harding met when they worked for the consultants McKinsey.
McKinsey got the £563k contract for advising on the “vision, purpose and narrative” of the National Institute for Health Protection, the new body run by Harding. This work was neither advertised nor subject to competitive tender.

Rupert Soames, is the grandson of Winston Churchill and the brother of a former Tory MP. His wife, Camilla, is a prominent Conservative party donor. An email of his, leaked in June, suggested that the coronavirus pandemic could go “a long way in cementing the position of private sector companies in the public sector supply chain.” He was right.

There are some serious issues here regarding public health, the misuse of public funds and the integrity of governance: please support the Organise petition using the URL below.
https://the.organise.network/campaigns/teamup-request-for-an-emergency-enquiry-on-the-uk-government-s-use-of-private-consultants-during-the-covid-crisis-the-misuse-of-public-funds-and-the-integrity-of-the-governance-process?utm_campaign=LDKriszoVk&utm_medium=whatsapp&utm_source=share