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BORIS JOHNSON’S government was accused today of “desperate blame-shifting” amid claims that it is planning to axe Public Health England (PHE) in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ministers are reportedly seeking to merge PHE’s work with that of the NHS test and trace operation, which is mainly run by private contractors Serco and Sitel.
PHE is an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care and has been in operation since 2013 after its creation under former health secretary Jeremy Hunt.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock is expected to announce this week that the two bodies’ work will be run by a new national institute for health protection – which would focus only on pandemics.
The new body could be headed up by Tory peer and test and trace chief Dido Harding – despite serious concerns over the scheme’s effectiveness.
Test and trace will next week cut back its number of call handlers and give more powers to local-council contact tracers after some handlers had claimed they were “paid to watch Netflix.”
Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said that responsibility for the handling of the coronavirus pandemic in Britain should remain with the government.
He said: “Ministers are responsible for Public Health England, so desperate attempts at blame shifting won’t succeed.
“Ultimately government deficiencies on testing, tracing, PPE, care homes and lockdown are ministerial failures.
“Ministers need to explain why time-consuming structural reorganisation mid-pandemic is helpful.
“PHE could have been better prepared if the Tories hadn’t spent years cutting public health budgets and then outsourcing much of the testing and tracing response to this pandemic.
“And where does this leave other important health prevention priorities, for example on sexual health services, drug and alcohol services and obesity, that PHE carries out? We need urgent clarity.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “Public Health England have played an integral role in our national response to this unprecedented global pandemic.
“We have always been clear that we must learn the right lessons from this crisis to ensure that we are in the strongest possible position, both in dealing with Covid-19 and responding to any future threat to public health.”
