Local Contact Tracing

Debate between Rachel Reeves and Andy Slaughter

Wednesday 14th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes the consistently high performance of local contact tracing systems when compared with the centralised system established by the Government; notes the wealth of evidence that the considerable sums of public money spent so far on the national system would deliver better public health outcomes if devolved to local authorities and public health experts; and calls on the Government to extend the additional funding for contact tracing available in Tier 3 areas to all parts of the country and ensure that councils and local public health teams receive the resources and powers they require.

This Government are obsessed with a failed model of outsourcing. It is failing to reach people who come into contact with someone with the virus, it is not getting information to local councils who need to act on it, and it is wasting hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money that could be spent on a local response using local expertise. It is not too late for the Government to change course, and I urge them to do so today.

Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition made the case for a short, sharp circuit break of restrictions lasting two to three weeks to firmly apply the brakes on the rising infection numbers that we are seeing. A crucial aim of the circuit break is to drive down infections, but there is another purpose as well: it would buy the Government some crucial time to fix the failures in contact tracing.

The current model of contact tracing is broken and it will get worse, not better, while corporations such as Serco are allowed in the driving seat rather than local public health teams. We might ask: how bad is the Government’s approach to contact tracing?

One director of public health said:

“It needs someone with the courage to say”

it “isn’t working”, and it was described as a

“catastrophe…the very worst system I’ve…seen”.

Well, we do have the courage to say that it is not working and I urge the Government to have that courage, too.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight Serco. Does she agree that another problem with test and trace is the number of consultants being employed, with more than a thousand from one firm alone—Deloitte—that charges several thousand pounds a day for its senior consultants? Should we not be told how much it is costing and what these people are doing?

[Rachel Reeves]

My hon. Friend makes his point well. He has been a staunch advocate of transparency and value for money in the delivery of public services. The Government’s own Minister in the Cabinet Office in the other place has made those points as well, saying that the Government are spending too much money on consultants when that work could be done in-house with better value for taxpayers. I very much agree with my hon. Friend’s comments.

The minutes of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies meeting from three weeks ago on 21 September, as well as suggesting a circuit break to deal with the rising infection numbers, reflected on the performance of the Government’s approach to test, trace and isolate. The minutes said that

“relatively low levels of engagement with the system…coupled with testing delays…is having a marginal impact on transmission”.

All that money spent, yet this key part of the Government’s system to keep us safe is only having a marginal impact on transmission.