The lack of performance delivery/enforcement clauses for the outsourcers’ and management consultants’ abysmal performance of their roles in the Test And Trace programme has been getting some new attention this week.
@HSJnews readers know that I wrote about these issues a month ago, linking to and quoting those contracts. hsj.co.uk/policy-and-reg…
This week, care minister Helen Whately explained in a written Parliamentary Answer that “contractual penalties are often unenforceable under English law so they were not included in test and trace contracts with Serco or Sitel”.
This is incorrect, according to the prominent lawyer & commentator @DavidAllenGreen. His whole Twitter thread is (as usual) worth reading: “this means the Minister and the government has had poor commercial law advice: the rule against contractual penalties is more lore than law.

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More from @HPIAndyCowper

19 Oct
The Cummings-Johnson government is led by campaigners (Mr Dominic Cummings) and former journalists (Mr Boris Johnson and Mr Michael Gove): these are people whose career-fundamental belief is that you can “comms” big, real problems away.
.@HSJnews readers know that you cannot “comms” big, real problems away. They have watched past attempts to do that fail, often with disastrous consequences for patient safety and care quality.
The gulf between Mr Cummings’ lengthily-blogged ambition for a “data-and-delivery-driven” government and the ongoing lousy performance of Test And Trace prove that he is neither a serious person, nor one with the slightest clue of how to fix big, real problems.
Read 5 tweets
19 Oct
Conservative peer, NHS Improvement chair and TAT leader the noble Baroness Harding of Winscombe gave the Sunday Times an interview, in which she laments that “everyone wants to believe that test and trace is a silver bullet. It has never been and it never will be”.
Life comes at you fast, eh?

Dido’s lament is a long way from M*tt H*nc*ck’s statement on 23 April that “This test, track and trace will be vital to stop a second peak of the virus”.

And an equally long way from the PM’s “world-beating” system promised five months ago in May.
Nor is it a reflection on why TAT’s performance in contact tracing is not just inadequate, but actually getting worse.

Baroness Harding adds, “wash your hands, wear a facemask. Keep your distance. That’s more of a silver bullet than anything Test And Trace can do”.
Read 5 tweets
19 Oct
In the least surprising event of this week, the Test And Trace system which is essential to getting the current Second Cummings Wave under some sort of control once again returned dismal performance figures.
The latest data show that just 62 per cent of contacts of those infected are reached by this programme. Regular readers know that this needs to be over 80 per cent to make the programme effective.
M*tt’s TAT’s stats remain abysmal. With the upswing in infection numbers, this could not be more important. M*tt’s TAT is now in a vicious downwards spiral of failure: it fails to contact people who have been exposed to people proven infected with covid-19,
Read 6 tweets
19 Oct
This week saw prime minister Johnson announce a new three-tier local alert system, with different rules in the medium (Tier One), high (Tier Two) and very high (Tier Three) alert localities.
“But hang on!” I hear you ask, “what happened to the government’s covid-19 Five Alert Levels? You know, the Nandos scale one?’
Ah, our communications genius of a prime minister has decided that was too confusing, and this new “simpler and standardised” approach will be better.
Read 6 tweets
16 Oct
If we had a not-shit national media, their first question would be to ask the precise date (month and year) on which these tests will be validated and rolled out.
I'm not really holding my breath, tbh.
Because these InstaTests are, at the current time, fiction.
Read 4 tweets
16 Oct
Ah. The government is going to hand out fictional tests to read that go into higher tiers.
These tests do not actually exist.
But, you know, nice story.
Read 4 tweets

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