McMahon blasts 'wasted' Test and Trace billions

Oldham West and Royton MP Jim McMahon

Oldham West and Royton MP Jim McMahon has hit out at the government after a report by the Public Accounts Committee described the “the unimaginable cost of Test and Trace" which "failed to deliver central promise of averting a second and third lockdown”.

Mr McMahon said: “Just imagine what our local public health team in Oldham could’ve done if they’d have been properly resourced - the outstanding work that teams in Oldham have been doing going door-to-door and engaging with our community could have been scaled up massively.

“But instead because of this Conservative Government’s incompetence, a reliance on consultants costing thousands of pounds per day and public contracts going to friends of the Conservative Party billions of pounds in taxpayer cash has been wasted.

“This obsession with outsourcing must come to an end sooner rather than later, and contract tracing should be ran by our local public health teams, as Labour have been calling for months now.

"Councils were promised ‘whatever it takes’ at the start of the pandemic.

"It didn’t take long before the Government rolled back on that.

"We’d be in a lot better state if the money funnelled to management consultants through Test and Trace was going to our local councils instead."

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