Oldham coronavirus cases are rising because the government’s privatised test and trace strategy is failing

Local leaders like me were furious when Boris Johnson gave Serco a huge £45.8m deal to run the programme - the same company that was last year fined £1m for previous failures to deliver on a government contract

Sean Fielding
Friday 31 July 2020 14:19 BST
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Matt Hancock announces restrictive measures for parts of northern England

This last week in Oldham there has been a spike in Covid-19 cases. The council is taking steps to bring it under control to reduce the need for a full local lockdown. The reaction has been quick – and in stark contrast to the pondering from national government in the early days of the pandemic – because we have a deep understanding of what’s happening in the local community. We know that spread is often happening in households, where social distancing is harder to enforce, so we’re restricting social visits to homes to help mitigate the risk of widespread transmission without so far having to close shops, schools and other facilities.

But even this could have been avoided if the government’s testing strategy was working properly.

In many ways, responding to Covid-19 has been a ramped up version of business as usual for local authorities like Oldham. It might be that most people only see their councils in action when they’re emptying the bins or resurfacing a road, but every day we’re providing care to vulnerable people, supporting foodbanks, making sure restaurants are safe, and coordinating actions with local police, health services and voluntary groups. The difference since the outbreak of coronavirus has been the amount of activity needed to tackle it is on a scale we’ve never seen before.

The government has made “test and trace” a key component of its plan to open up the country again, freeing people to go about more of their daily business on the understanding that, if they have encountered someone who has since tested positive for the virus, they’ll be contacted and asked to isolate for two weeks.

It’s one of those things that local authorities have been doing for years: whenever there is a local outbreak of a serious infectious disease – measles, for example – our public health teams work in the local community in partnership with Public Health England to contact people who may have been exposed and stop it spreading.

That’s why so many of us working in local government were hugely frustrated when Boris Johnson opted to centralise the test and trace strategy, giving the private sector firm Serco a huge £45.8m contract to run the programme, rather than bolstering the great local systems that already exist. That’s the very same Serco that only last year was fined more than £1m for previous failures to deliver on a government contract.

Unsurprisingly, Serco’s record has so far been abysmal. Whether it’s providing shoddy data to local authorities or breaking data protection law, their management has been one disaster after another.

So bad is their handling of the system that are even reports of contact tracers being left with so little to do they spent their time at work watching Netflix as a result of having no contact from their supervisors. Worse still, the jumbled mess on test and trace has meant that we’ve waited months for the government to require Serco’s national system to pass on data to local public health teams.

This isn’t a recipe for an effective response to the pandemic. It’s a recipe for disaster.

The decision making with test and trace shows the same thinking we’ve seen throughout this crisis and before: we don’t trust local experts, we’d rather rely on the private sector, and we’ll hold information and data close to our chests rather than collaborating. From testing to contact tracing, from PPE supply to the delivery of food parcels to shielders, the government’s obsession with privatisation and outsourcing runs right through its response to Covid-19

That obsession is hampering our chances of getting on top of pandemic, as 40 per cent of the public have said they’re less likely to participate in the contact tracing system because of Serco’s involvement, according to polling commissioned by We Own It. Without trust in the system, it falls apart.

It’s time for the government to face reality. Local authorities have the experience needed to deliver the track and trace system we need. Understanding the dynamics of particular communities, where they meet and how, and the best ways to contact them, is vital to doing this work properly. That’s why two thirds of the public think local public health teams should be in charge.

It’s time for the government to accept that Serco has failed, and to give the responsibility and resources over to local public health teams to deliver track and trace. It’s not too late. With our ability to keep this terrible virus under control in the balance, it’s imperative.

Sean Fielding is leader of Oldham Council

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