The United Kingdom lawmakers claim that the government has allegedly wasted 37 billion Pounds on the COVID-19 test and trace programme. “Wasted”, because the programme was not at all beneficial and did not control the spread of COVID-19 in the country.
The United Kingdom Government Slammed for Wasting Billions of Euros
Amid rising COVID-19 cases in the United Kingdom, lawmakers have put some serious allegations on the ruling government. The lawmakers claim that the government has allegedly wasted 37 billion Pounds on the COVID-19 test and trace programme.
However, the testing was not at all worth it and did not control the spread of the virus in the country. The inexperienced head of the programme, Dido Harding, was extremely confident about this programme. But nothing fruitful came into light.
Opposition Defends Taxpayers
The opposition is backfiring at the government of the United Kingdom. Meg Hiller from the opposition Labor party said in an interview with the BBC radio that all the money went into vain. The government over-promised every single thing without any research with eye-watering amount of money. Moreover, she compared the taxpayers to an ATM machine. The government just spent billions of Pounds on a programme that didn’t show. She further cited the lack of regard the government has for the taxpayers.
Did the Plan Work in the United Kingdom?
The United Kingdom has the second-highest death toll from COVID-19 in Europe, after Russia. When the outbreak started last year, the government initiated a programme from scratch to test and trace people for COVID-19. However, there was a sudden outburst of cases in the country and all the money went in vain. The authorities believed that this programme could actually help control the virus from spreading in the UK. But the plan didn’t work eventually.
Conclusion of the Scheme
It was concluded that the plan did not achieve its main objective. Moreover, the uptake of services that the scheme offered was “viable”. Besides that, only a few people experiencing mild symptoms got tested for COVID-19. Henceforth, the scheme did not help in breaking the chain of the virus in the United Kingdom. Although the government has defended the testing program, citing that more people receive the tests than any other country in the entire continent.