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A top Conservative MP and leading ally of Boris Johnson is calling for Dido Harding, the embattled head of NHS Test and Trace, to be fired.
Sir Bernard Jenkin, who chairs the powerful Liaison Committee of senior MPs, says Baroness Harding, a conservative peer, “should have a well-deserved rest,” adding that “the immediate priority is to fill the leadership vacuum in Test and Trace “.
His call comes just days after the prime minister and his top scientific adviser first publicly admitted that the system is not working effectively.
Sir Bernard is the head of the powerful Liaison Committee
It also coincides with a new opinion poll suggesting that public approval of the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis has reached its lowest level.
The poll suggests that half of voters, 50%, now disapprove of the government’s handling of the pandemic, while fewer than one in three, 29%, approve.
Sir Bernard, controversially installed by Boris Johnson as chairman of the Liaison Committee this year, calls for the removal of Baroness Harding in a forceful article in The Sunday Telegraph.
“Dido Harding, director of NHS Test and Trace, apparently says she is struggling with what she inherited when she came to paper, but over the summer, the initial urgency lessened,” writes Sir Bernard.
“Perhaps some of those exhausted leaders on the front lines of government, like Dido Harding, could also get a well-earned rest; they could use their hard-earned experience to help this group reflect on the lessons learned thus far.”
Claiming that the public has lost trust in Tests and Trace, Sir Bernard calls for a military commander to be put in charge and also accuses the government of raising false hopes of a coronavirus vaccine.
“The challenge for the government is to become one of public trust,” he writes. “Incredible work is being done, but we are still a long way from the ‘world leading contact tracing system’ promised in June.
“Announcing new targets (now 500,000 tests a day at the end of October) doesn’t instill confidence because people don’t have faith that there is a coherent plan.
“Instead, ministers should see this as an opportunity to make change. This change must be visible and decisive.”
Listing various failures of the system, Sir Bernard complains: “There is a command and control spaghetti at the top, which is incapable of consistent analysis, evaluation, planning and execution.
“The addresses suffer a high level of rotation. Data analysis has had three CEOs in five months. Bosses do not ‘own’ their staff: most are temporary appointments and difficult to hire due to a ‘toxic culture’.
“‘People want to get out as quickly as possible,’ they have told deputies. That is why the government is forced to depend on thousands of consultants at enormous cost.”
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He adds: “The immediate priority is to fill the leadership void at Test and Trace, which is destroying cooperation and compliance.
“The Liaison Committee has called for military capability to play a greater role. The government took advantage of the military to regain control in the foot-and-mouth disease crisis; the prime minister must follow that example today, installing a single leader, a Three- or four-star army commander with a reputation for handling complexity under stress.
“Then Test and Trace should be tasked with generating and sustaining a campaign aimed at achieving behavior change through consent. The result would be a better virus containment process that builds trust and public compliance.”
“But the government should also stop creating false hopes that a single vaccine will be transformative. It may take some time before vaccines can make a major difference. So what is the strategy?
“The government should establish a high-level strategic working group, away from the immediate pressures of the crisis. It should produce a first draft of a white paper entitled Living with the Coronavirus.”
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Sir Bernard’s attack on Test and Trace followed the prime minister’s saying at a Downing Street press conference on Thursday: “I share the frustrations of the people and fully understand why we need to see faster response times and we need to improve it.”
At the same press conference, Chief Scientific Advisor Sir Patrick Vallance said: “It is very clear that there is room for improvement in all of that and therefore that would be diminishing the effectiveness of this.”
The new opinion poll, conducted by Opinium, suggests that Labor is now leading the Conservatives by two points, holding at 40%, while the Conservatives have dropped to 38% during their coronavirus woes.
And after Andy Burnham’s resounding clash with the government, 50% of those living in Greater Manchester approve of the way he’s handling his job as mayor and his net approval rating of + 25% is significantly higher than the Johnson nationwide at -14%.
