Furious Serco chief blasts back at critics of coronavirus Test and Trace ‘shambles’: We’re being used as a ‘poster-ghoul’ claims Rupert Soames
Under fire Serco chief executive Rupert Soames has launched a bitter attack on critics who he says have thrown ‘vitriol’ at his firm. He insists the Government’s Test and Trace system is ‘more world beating than a shambles’.
In an irate defence of Serco’s involvement in the programme, launched in May to ramp up testing and locate those infected, Soames complains his firm has become a ‘poster-ghoul’ and says critics could have the same impact as the ‘anti-vaxxer’ conspiracy theorists opposed to vaccinations.
His strongly worded rebuke – in which he repeatedly lambasts Labour MPs – is likely to add fuel to the row over the Government’s use of private contractors to combat the pandemic, particularly in the Test and Trace programme.
Scapegoat: Rupert Soames says private firms like his have been vilified
Writing in The Mail on Sunday today, Soames admits underwhelming efforts in the summer left the UK’s system trailing other nations and says the service was overloaded by returning university students in early September.
But he claims the scale of the operation is now ‘mind-boggling’, citing 16million tests given to 9million people overall – 5.3million of those tests in the past four weeks.
Despite thrusting himself into the centre of an ever-more toxic debate, he downplays his firm’s role, placing the NHS and Public Health England firmly in the firing line. He says Serco ‘plays quite a small and clearly defined role in the system’ providing a quarter of testing sites and half of contact tracers.
Serco last week labelled its work on the troubled system ‘outstanding’ and raised group profit forecasts for the year to as much as £165million. The figures incensed critics who have complained the Government has handed large sums to private firms.
The controversy has reignited a long-running debate over the outsourcing of key Government activities to the private sector.
Critics say local authority teams have proved more effective at tracing individuals, and money should be used for saving lives rather than contributing to profit. One said the situation confirmed that the waste and inefficiency of healthcare privatisation was ‘off the scale’.
This month it emerged that more than 1,000 consultants from Deloitte are working on Test and Trace with day rates up to £2,360.
Soames, a grandson of Winston Churchill, is brother to the former Tory MP Sir Nicholas Soames. His wife Camilla is a Conservative donor. Health Minister Edward Argar is a former Serco lobbyist.
Another firm, Randox Laboratories, which pays former Cabinet Minister Owen Paterson as an adviser, received £133million for Covid-19 testing. Thousands of test kits had to be recalled.
Shadow Cabinet Office Minister Rachel Reeves said last month: ‘This pandemic has taught us just how addicted this Government is to outsourcing. It is unacceptable that so many public contracts have been awarded without tender to Conservative friends and donors.’
Michael Gove, Minister for the Cabinet Office, has defended the use of expensive consultants. He said: ‘It’s absolutely vital that we have all the expertise required from the private and public sector to improve testing.’