This government is a complete shambles

[lisvaneblue]

PHE is an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care not an autonomous quango as you state i.e it is part of the Civil Service and staffed by civil servants and Matt Hancock is directly responsible for it, its responsibilities, budgets and plans. Though to be fair if you got your information on its governance from, say the Daily Mail then you could be forgiven for thinking it is a quango sitting far more outside the control of Ministers.

Fortunately there are more informative sources such as the Institute for Government which explain its relationship, how it was established by the Cameron government and how its integration within and accountable to a government department abolished about 70 of those nasty autonomous quangos you reference.

https://www.instituteforgovernment.o...health-england

That seems less pertinent than who is responsible for the testing and tracing programme though. As previously discussed this is led by Dido Harding. She reports directly to Boris Johnson and the Cabinet Secretary (if we had one) and not to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. (see Government Announcement). She is supported in this role by John Newton of PHE.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/n...amme-appointed

Other than Newton's supportive role it is not clear where PHE fits in the testing and tracing governance. What is clear is that it is not responsible for it. That sits fully in the hands of a Tory Peer reporting directly to the Prime Minister.

If you want to change your view that PHE is responsible for the 25,000 tracers who have contacted an average of less than two people each since test, track and trace was introduced from a simple yes to a simple no now would be a good time I guess.

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

[cyril evans awaydays]

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.

[lisvaneblue]

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.

I apologise for the misquotation. Not intentional.

However I still maintain that ultimately PHE must be responsible. The fact that they were so off the mark that Bojo had to outsource Track and trace does not relinquish them of their responsibilities.
Faced with the most important thing they have been asked to manage for decades they have been found wanting and I doubt t they will survive in their present form for much longer

[cyril evans awaydays]

I apologise for the misquotation. Not intentional.

However I still maintain that ultimately PHE must be responsible. The fact that they were so off the mark that Bojo had to outsource Track and trace does not relinquish them of their responsibilities.
Faced with the most important thing they have been asked to manage for decades they have been found wanting and I doubt t they will survive in their present form for much longer

I think your original response to the Panorama programme was to place most of the responsibility for the performance of NHS Track and Trace at PHE's door. I think we now both understand that this is a Dido/Johnson accountability and PHE are a bit player.

It may be that it did not perform brilliantly or have the capacity to do so whhen testing and tracing was dropped in favour of herd immunity as the virus took hold. I don't know enough about who made the recommendations and decisions around the go it alone app to know whether PHE had any culpability or whether the decision to "buy British" was political.

I think you are being a bit unfair in saying it was found wanting on its most important challenge for decades as I think I pointed out earlier it was formed by the Cameron government in 2013 and has been in existence for just over seven years.

I am reminded a it of one of the mantras of some of the change programmes I was involved in. Success has many parents....failure is an orphan!

[lisvaneblue]

I think your original response to the Panorama programme was to place most of the responsibility for the performance of NHS Track and Trace at PHE's door. I think we now both understand that this is a Dido/Johnson accountability and PHE are a bit player.

It may be that it did not perform brilliantly or have the capacity to do so whhen testing and tracing was dropped in favour of herd immunity as the virus took hold. I don't know enough about who made the recommendations and decisions around the go it alone app to know whether PHE had any culpability or whether the decision to "buy British" was political.

I think you are being a bit unfair in saying it was found wanting on its most important challenge for decades as I think I pointed out earlier it was formed by the Cameron government in 2013 and has been in existence for just over seven years.

I am reminded a it of one of the mantras of some of the change programmes I was involved in. Success has many parents....failure is an orphan!

I don't think Im being unfair on PHE. There was a test run on handling an epidemic in 2016 and no lessons seemed to be learned. I know the pandemic is a big challenge for it, but same goes for supermarkets, the UK medicines supply chain, and of course the NHS, plus many others that kept essentials going.

They stepped up to the plate but PHE barely got off the starting blocks.