Local Contact Tracing

Debate between Kate Osborne and Jane Stevenson

Wednesday 14th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)]

Let us be clear from the start: the test, trace and isolate chaos that we are currently facing has been caused by outsourced companies running what should be public services for their own private profit. The current restrictions were never inevitable; they became inevitable as a result of this Government’s failure to get a properly functioning test, trace and isolate system in place. The system has been given to private companies with no qualifications for this work, overseen by business executives with no experience in public health. Just days before local restrictions came into place in the north-east, my Jarrow constituents were asking me to find out what has happened with the “shambles”, as they put it, that is the covid testing system. One constituent, Tracy, told me how a family member did a 110-mile round trip from Gateshead to Hawick in Scotland for a test. This was while there were appointments in Newcastle just a few miles along the road, but the centre had IT problems and the QR code was not being generated. She was rightly furious that her family member, while displaying symptoms, had to drive this distance. My Jarrow constituents are right: it is an utter shambles.

This Government’s approach to contact tracing is not just shambolic—it is dangerous. The evidence shows that contact tracing works much better on a local level. Both the South Tyneside and Gateshead local authorities covering my constituency have been constantly telling the Government this, but they are just not listening. I pay tribute to Alice Wiseman and Tom Hall, the directors of public health for those authorities, and their teams, for their dedication and hard work.

From Oldham to Peterborough, from Manchester to Cumbria, and across Wales, we have seen how local councils bring back much higher contact rates and can curb the spread of infection far more than the outsourced model that the Government keep throwing money away on. The Government know it is not working, yet the same old Tory ideological commitment to outsourcing continues. According to the Government’s own data, local health protection teams are reaching 97% of contacts and asking them to self-isolate, while, in contrast, outsourced cases handled online or by call centres return 62.4% contact rates. The most striking thing is that the Government have had plenty of opportunity throughout the summer to address the failures of a privatised and centralised contact tracing model, yet they have chosen to keep pouring money into the likes of Serco to lead the effort on tracking and tracing.

[Jane Stevenson (Wolverhampton North East) (Con)]

There must be a common-sense approach at both ends of this. Does the hon. Lady accept that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans) said, the NHS and public health authorities do not have the capacity to cope with the vast number of tests, and we need this national approach as well as local involvement?

[Kate Osborne]

No, I do not. The Government can put this right by putting more money in, of course.

As my hon. Friends the Members for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) and for Bradford West (Naz Shah), among others, have said, we have to stop calling it “NHS Track and Trace”, as it clearly is not. It has failed, it is wasteful, it is throwing taxpayers’ money down the drain, and the people of this country deserve better. In fact, only this afternoon, as already highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), I heard that the Government paid Boston Consulting Group about £10 million for a team of 40 consultants to do four months’ work on this failed testing system between the end of April and late August. Yet our local public services, hollowed out by 10 years of austerity, are being left with no support to pick up the pieces of a failed system.

Our local authorities in the north-east were crucial in the frontline against the first wave of this virus. That is why the Government must recognise their value by extending additional funding for contact tracing available in tier 3 areas to all parts of the country. The Government must ensure that local authorities and public health teams receive the resources and powers that they need.