Re: Share the blame
@Andy73, have to disagree. NHS Digital (not NHS X, which is what this falls under) is very capable, T&T would have worked if they had involved the local authorities (and the LAs showed how well T&T worked when they got involved).
The Robert Koch Institut (RKI) in Germany spun up an app in record time, the Irish Republic, Scotland (I think) and the Northern Ireland (to be compatible with the republic) health people all used it, it was open source, it was open to all, people could have downloaded the source and used it. NHS X chose not to, God forbid they would rely on something someone else did somewhere else! They p***ed about with their version, found it didn't work with the updated Apple and Google APIs, and then had to spend another 3 months rewriting theirs to work.
So yes, a *LOT* of time and energy was wasted chasing after a 'world leading app that'll be the envy of all the world, specially those EU folks who we waved goodbye to in December'. It was petty, it was political, it was wasteful.
That said, people have to remember that not all of T&T was wasteful. I have it on good authority from someone I know at the Treasury that the vast majority of the costs that everyone likes to claim is the cost of the tens, if not hundreds of millions of PCR tests that were provided *FOR FREE* on the T&T dime. They are not cheap (but not as cheap as LFTs), and the cost of the reagents to make PCR tests work were in short supply as everyone ramped up testing.
So... while the management of T&T was woefully bad under Harding's hands, the bits that worked well were PCR testing. The politics involved in T&T was unnecessary, and any neutral party (i.e. *not* a Tory/Labour donor/functionary) would have made a success of the bits that didn't work (the Trace part of it).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
