When it was nicely under way last year we were told that the "world beating" national Test Trace and Isolate (TTI) scheme to track and contain coronavirus was costing £12bn ( to be clear, billions, not millions).
By the end of the year we were told it was costing £22bn.
We now hear that it is to continue and over a two year period is budgeted to cost £37bn
In an Email sent out by The Good Law Project, Diane Coyle, the Bennett Professor of Public Policy at Cambridge University, criticising the (by comparison mere) £4.8b expenditure on upgrading largely Tory areas, claims that £4.8bn is more than enough to give our 670,000 nurses a pay rise of 25% rather than the meagre below inflation 1% offered to them.
Rather than being "world beating" the TTI scheme which, rather than making use of established public sector organisations such as the NHS and Local Government Public Health Services, was largely outsourced to the private sector, is generally regraded as an expensive failure. A parliamentary committee has now deemed that it has made little effect on the spread of the virus.
Happily the system may now improve slightly as local government and the NHS are becoming more involved.
By contrast the vaccination programme, the success of which is being milked by the government for all it's worth, is largely if not entirely entirely run through the NHS.
I sincerely hope these facts and figures will be full exposed on the front pages as and when the necessary public enquiry is set up
By contrast the vaccination programme, the success of which is being milked by the government for all it's worth, is largely if not entirely entirely run through the NHS.
ReplyDeleteThat'll be news to Pfizer and AstraZenica.
The distribution ( a more appropriate verb than "roll out" which is usually associated with barrels) is done largely through the NHS, in contrast to the track and trace system with is largely privatised.
ReplyDeleteThe distribution ( a more appropriate verb than "roll out" which is usually associated with barrels) is done largely through the NHS, in contrast to the track and trace system with is largely privatised
DeleteBut without private companies developing, producing, and delivering the vaccines they wouldn't have any to distribute, so it seems a rather odd and arbitrary part of the process to draw a line around.
As for the track and trace system, the one bit which does seem to work is the testing — at least, it does once it was taken out of the hands of the public-sector PHE, who were making a complete hash of it.
There really doesn't seem to be a simplistic 'public sector good, private sector bad' lesson to be drawn here.
It is true that few things are entirely publicly or privately provided in our "mixed economy." For example, although I believe the navy at one time built (or a least repaired) its own ships the army has never manufactured its own tanks, but farmed that our to such as Vickers. The NHS does not manufacture its own drugs, though I believe at least one publicly owned pharmaceutical company would be a good idea.
DeleteThe fact is that the use of the private sector to operate the test, trace and isolate system has been an expensive failure, and the distribution of the vaccine vie the NHS a great success.
The fact is that the use of the private sector to operate the test, trace and isolate system has been an expensive failure, and the distribution of the vaccine vie the NHS a great success.
DeleteAnd the use of the public sector PHE to do testing was an expensive failure, and the creation and production of the vaccine via private companies a great success.
Both the private sector and the public sector have abysmally failed, and greatly succeeded, during this kerfuffle.
My understanding is that the TTI system was badged as NHS but was largely run by the private sector (Serco, I think) The Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine was developed, as the name suggests, by Oxford University, and is produced by AstraZeneca only as a result of a massive bung of public money in order to bear the risk. I do not deny that the private sector can do useful things successfully, but in this area the public sector has come out the clear winner.
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