Quote Originally Posted by lisvaneblue View Post
You are a pedantic individual.

PHE is responsible as I mentioned earlier. Dido Harding was brought in to supposedly sort out T&T but that does not take the overall accountability away from PHE who are responsible for' preparing for and responding to public health emergencies. There is no other organisation in England with this responsibility.

PHE has been sadly lacking in this pandemic but that does not take away its responsibilities. In late April England Health Minister Jo Churchill told PHE that it needed to adjust its organisational activities and resourcing of priority activities in line with the scale of response to Covid-19'

A spokesperson for PHE very recently replied to the PMs non specific comments about sluggish response by some organisations said..' PHE is playing a key role in our response working on important issues such as detection, surveillance, contact tracing and testing. Were have made changes to our structure already, for instance WE HAVE SET UP FROM SCRATCH NHS TEST & TRACE and the Joint Bio-security centre'

So its not just me that say PHE is responsible, they are saying it themselves
If I was being pedantic I would have pointed out that the quote you mentioned appeared in a Guardian article about Ministers seeking to transfer blame and responsibility to PHE. Rather than the selective quote you seem to give it was the Prime Minister's spokesman who made the quote.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ovid-19-errors

Asked whether PHE was under threat, the prime minister’s spokesman praised its role in the coronavirus crisis, but also stressed the need to ensure that institutions were “fit to cope” with future emergencies.

“Public Health England are playing a key role in our response, working on important issues such as detection, surveillance, contact-tracing and testing,” he said. “They have been working hard to help protect the country and to provide insight in our efforts to beat the virus.”

The spokesman added: “We’ve made changes to structures already, for instance we have set up, from scratch, NHS test and trace, and the joint biosecurity centre. Any future changes that we might make would be aimed at further strengthening our public health capability.”

When seen in that context it is obvious that the Prime Minister's spokesman when using the term we is referencing Boris Johnson's government and not PHE. This perfectly fits with the governance in which Dido Harding set up the test and trace system from scratch reporting directly to the Prime Minister.

I am sure you did not intentionally try to mislead to make your point though.