back to article Outsourcing firm Serco wins £212m UK Test and Trace deal

Serco has won a £212m ($278m) contract for disease testing and contract tracing from the UK Health Security Agency, the organisations set up to replace the controversial NHS Test & Trace and doomed Public Health England. In a contract initially set to last two years, the tech and public sector outsourcing provider will be …

  1. VoiceOfTruth

    One of the usual suspects

    This company, with a proven record of fraud, somehow keeps managing to collect government contracts. We then read a few years later how there were problems, difficulties, and the outsourcing to $usualsuspectcompany did not go according to plan, and any anticipated savings were lost or were negligible.

    I am far from being a communist of even a socialist, but these outsourcing deals are there to enrich a small group of people who know people in government (party affiliation is unimportant), while socialising all the risks to the tax payer.

    Repeat for the next government contract.

  2. Ian Johnston Silver badge

    £212m to run a programme which has already been wound up is a bit blatant, even for Boris and his chums.

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      How is a new programme already wound up?

      This is a more general disease control programme, not just a covid response.

      1. NeilPost Silver badge

        They would be better chucking the money at retooling Imperial College’s REACT surveillance, so you are for-warned about what’s landed on your shores.

        If they want effective T & T… buy off the shelf from Taiwan Government.

        What works is

        Surveillance

        Containment/Restrictions

        Vaccination

        Gradual and measured return to normal

        Help the rest of the world deal with it to minimise variants being generated

        .. as Taiwan demonstrated by few deaths, few hospitalisations and no real lockdowns.

    2. Scott Broukell

      But it's not just "wound up", how silly! - it's a transformative inertial conclusivity programme - which requires agility and paying con$ultant$ to think outside the box with a lot of specialist technical responses, all of which needs to be properly aligned, going forwards.

      1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge
        Coat

        properly aligned, going forwards.

        They would have their ducks in a row too, but avian 'flu makes it tricky

  3. R Soul Silver badge

    Serco have fucked up

    If they'd hired Dildo Harding, they could have got a £53B contract from fuckwit Boris's clown parade.

  4. Big Softie

    "The advertised cost of the contract is the maximum that can be spent, the actual cost is likely to be much less"

    And when has that ever happened?

  5. EnviableOne

    Fair and Open

    "The contracts have been awarded following a fair and open procurement process, in line with public sector procurement guidelines and with the aim of achieving value for the taxpayer."

    surely that should be a Fayre and Old Men process in line with private school cronies and achieving profits for the low tax paying oligarch doners of the party.

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