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Baroness Harding, the fellow Conservative who leads the government’s much-criticized test-and-trace program, should be removed and replaced, said a senior Conservative MP.
Sir Bernard Jenkin, a Harwich MP and chairman of the powerful parliamentary liaison committee, called for a “well-deserved rest” and turned to “lessons learned.”
He warned of a “leadership vacuum in test and trace, which is destroying public trust and compliance,” it was reported Saturday night. He continued to criticize call and data handling in a “command-and-control spaghetti” at the top of the organization.
Jenkin, a former vice chairman of the Conservative Party, is the highest-ranking Conservative to question the government’s testing and tracing, as concerns about its operations mount.
“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 changes; to show that we are all learning from experience.
“Change must be visible and decisive … the immediate priority is to fill the leadership void in test and trace,” he wrote in the Sunday Telegraph.
His harsh criticism came when it was reported that officials from the Downing Street Covid-19 task force were asked to consider reducing the self-isolation quarantine period for those infected from 14 days to between seven and 10 days.
After a week in social isolation, people who test positive could be offered a second test, and the quarantine period ends as soon as a negative result is declared.
The proposal came after the prime minister was apparently told that 14 days of isolation is a major barrier to widespread support for the rules.
