Senior Labour frontbenchers have today written to the health secretary, Matt Hancock, demanding the government ends the outsourcing of COVID-19 contact tracing and redirects the money to local authorities.
In a letter seen by openDemocracy, Rachel Reeves, shadow Cabinet Office secretary, and Jon Ashworth, shadow health secretary, point out that “since the start of the pandemic, almost two million close contacts have been left untraced and uncontacted in England”. It also asks whether the government will “claw back some of the money from this clearly failed contract”.
The letter comes as the original contracts for a national contact-tracing call centre come up for renewal, openDemocracy understands. In the letter, Reeves and Ashworth say “it would be a grave mistake to continue with a flawed approach which has proved costly in every sense”.
