Monthly Archives: September 2020

Serco Killer

…qu’est-ce que c’est?

For the benefit of the confused – and, frankly, who isn’t these days – the NHS Track and Trace “system” is no such thing. The CJJ “government” slapped the NHS logo on a privatised service run by various companies with no previous Public Health experience or expertise. Here are the villains of the piece:

Sitel

Sitel is a US company, headquartered in Florida, which runs the T&T call centre. They call their core business “Customer Experience Management” which they seem to like to abbreviate to “CX”. They work across a wide range of industry sectors and their expertise seems to be call management. Their website is full of bullshit management speak like “omnichannel customer service solution” and “incomplete or stretched channel strategies”. Obviously, halfwit impressionable people like Matt Hancock find this all very exciting.

So, how well are they performing? Assuming that the call centre is the original point of contact for those with positive Covid test results, activity since June has risen from around 4300 per week (73% of positive cases given) to nearly 13,000 in early September (83%). Although they seem to be learning on the job, Sitel are still failing in the relatively straightforward task of making contact with one out of six of the people on a list.

Serco

Serco (of escaped prisoners and invoicing for dead people’s security tags fame) manage the contact tracers. Here’s an example of one of Serco’s earlier failures working for the Home Office on immigrant removal centres such as the notorious Yarl’s Wood in Bedfordshire. To give a flavour: one incident there in 2018 involved 100 women going on hunger strike in protest at their detention and treatment by Serco staff. The company even denied that the strike was happening. So, transparency not great then.

Yarl’s Wood

Serco have made their fortunes hoovering up former public sector work privatised by successive Tory governments. Its CEO was paid £4.5m in 2018 (the most recent I could find). No wonder Boris Johnson complains he can’t manage on a measly £150,000 as Prime Minister!

So, how good a job are they doing at contact tracing? The trend figures are as follows: in June, around 91% of positive cases’ contacts were reached, this has fallen erratically to 74% in early September, having been below 70% for much of September. So the overall system over the 3-month period has found 62% (i.e. 78% of 80%) of potential contacts, well below the target of 80% to be effective.

Deloittes

The other main player bringing the name of the NHS into disrepute is Deloittes, one of the Big Four auditor firms who, like their three competitors, suffer a massive conflict of interest by making most of their profits from consultancy work – much of it for the UK government. Their main task is to coordinate – don’t laugh – the so-called “pillar two” laboratories: the “Lighthouse Labs”. My observation of lighthouses over the years is that they provide a brief flash of light, then all is darkness for most of the time before the next flash. Seems an appropriate name.

The pillar two labs are run by a mixture of private companies and universities. The ramp-up has been considerable: three labs initially, currently five, with four more planned. The reality has been a fiasco. And, sadly, all too predictable. Schoolchildren returned to school in early September (in England), the government has been exhorting people to return to work and to “Eat Out to Help Out”. All of these led to a lot more social mixing and a lot more opportunities for the virus to spread. Just a few short weeks ago, Hancock was advising everyone, if they had “any doubt”, to get tested. Then, just a few days ago, the same Matt Hancock was blaming the public for too many of them coming forward for tests. The press reports of people booking tests – if they could get one – hundreds of miles away are well reported elsewhere. Matching test sites with available slots to geographically close people who need tests seems beyond the capability of the government’s chosen contractor.

The number tested has been increasing. On the government’s own figures, the number of tests has increased by 57% since June. The official figures mix up those tested for current virus infection with antibody tests (which show past infection). So the volume figures must be treated with caution. But, to be of any use, test results must be turned round quickly: within 24 hours or even less. This is because people can pass on their infection before any symptoms show: this has been the particularly dangerous feature of this virus.

Here, it all gets a bit complicated – presumably deliberately – by a government keen to obfuscate things. We need to get into the world of pillars. No, not pillocks, but you could be excused. Pillar 1, in the public sector, is, roughly speaking done by NHS staff on NHS staff or key workers. Here, there’s good news: around 90% of test results are returned within 24 hours. Pillar 2 is the private sector work done on the rest of us: the general public. On speed, it’s mostly bad news. Using government figures, the proportion of Pillar 2 test results received in 24 hours in early September was only 58% at a “permanent” site and 69% at the mobile “pop-up” centres. Only 17% of home tests get test results within the target 48 hours; for “Satellite” (basically Care Homes) it’s a pathetic 8%, taking an average of 83 hours – half a week – for Care Home managers to get test results. In mid-June, they were averaging 28 hours. No wonder Care Home managers and staff are complaining again!

Keir Starmer’s comment that the government has “lost control” of testing seems entirely fair comment.

Public and Private

There’s worse. These figures actually flatter considerably the performance of the private sector companies. Wikipedia talks coyly of the privatised system working “in parallel” with experienced contact tracers working in local government for Directors of Public Health. These are the people who actually know what they’re doing with expertise built up in the public sector over many years, dealing with flu, AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases. The public sector figures are combined with the private companies in the performance statistics. And, surprise surprise, the public sector people do a much better job: 93% of contacts reached compared to only 61%.

I used the word “coyly” in the last paragraph. The truth is that the centralised, privatised system set up by Hancock and co. has, for the most part, treated the local PHE teams as their enemies, starving them of vital information for them to do their job. Central government has had to be dragged kicking and screaming into cooperation with local authority Public Health staff. A local mayor told me of the extreme difficulty he had getting the information his PH people needed to keep his local population safe.

 A further example was when the Deloittes logistics people sent, literally, an army of military staff to set up a mobile testing centre in the middle of a West Midlands town. The local Director of Public Health was given no prior warning, the exercise led to pitifully few tests – there was even talk of soldiers accosting people in the street to take a test, to boost the numbers reported by Hancock. The exercise caused traffic havoc and the DPH spent much time and effort to get a more workable solution.

In fact, my understanding is that the contract specifications signed with the private companies were not even designed to feed actionable data to local PHE teams. Dogma and a blinkered approach in Westminster led to serious – and deadly – fragmentation.

Isle of Wight on the Night

Oh, and the NHS Track and Trace app worked well, didn’t it? Version 2, totally redesigned, is due for launch tomorrow, but it seems to be a secret for now. So, not world beating, then – again.

Fragmented, Disjointed

As you will see above, a system as fragmented as this is bound to fail. Compare, for example, Germany’s much more successful approach, building on an existing regional expertise in public health.

But there is another, more fundamental, way where there is a discontinuity. Back in 2016, I wrote a blog post entitled In Praise of Public Service Values. The main point I want to emphasise from that post is this. When providing a public service in the public sector, everyone in the organisation has broadly the same purpose: to provide the best possible service to the public. If that service is privatised, those at the top are more fixated on short-term profit and the company’s share price. Somewhere between the bottom and the top, messages – and priorities – get mixed and confused. No wonder that privatisation of “naturally” public services nearly always leads to a worse service.

 Dido, Queen of Carnage

And presiding over all this is Dido “Dodo” Harding, Tory peer and general waste of DNA. I’m deeply indebted to the brilliant Guardian journalist Marina Hyde for the above formulation in the paragraph header. For the less-well classically educated (which includes me), I have included a link here which explains the joke. (For good measure, Christopher Marlowe, one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, wrote a play about her.)

But note this: don’t let the useless, incompetent buggers like Dido/Dodo, Sitel, Serco, Deloittes and their army of sub- and sub-sub-contractors sully the reputation of Our NHS. During this Second Wave, it needs more than just our applause.

Talking Heads

On Monday, medical advisers Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance had their own TV programme to explain to us all just how fucked we were as a country and how careful we must be over the next 6 months. I confess I did not have the stomach to watch Johnson confuse the whole thing the next day with his incoherent babble. I’m up to HERE with mixed messages.

So, in summary, I add:

Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-far better
Run, run, run, run, run, run, run away oh oh oh oh
Yeah yeah yeah yeah!

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Oven Ready

Our electric oven is not ready. It’s not working. Rather like the British government: not ready for anything. Pandemic wave two. EU trade deal. Test and trace. Anything more taxing than a three-word slogan: cook my dinner!

Oven and Out

Last week, our kitchen oven stopped working. Or, to be more precise, it stopped working properly. Our dinner was cooking nicely in a hot oven: 200 degrees. The only trouble was it didn’t stop at 200 degrees: it kept on getting hotter and hotter. By the time we had noticed, our meal was burnt. Black. Charcoal. Not at all the way we like it.

It’s getting fixed tomorrow: new circuit board: 200 quid. Cheaper than a new oven, we think. Anyway, the oven-as-charcoal-burner reminded me of something.

Oven At ‘Em

Those of you with attention spans longer than our Prime Minister (which is nearly everyone) will remember a phrase from the election campaign last year. “Oven ready”. Following the election, Johnson quickly caved in to the EU’s concerns about preserving the integrity of the Single Market by agreeing to customs checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This was quickly pushed through Parliament following the election and voted on by Johnson’s New Model Army of compliant MPs. It seems that neither Johnson nor those MPs had really understood what they were voting for. Certainly we know Johnson doesn’t bother himself with detail: how many of his MPs, I wonder, knew they were helping to set things up for a no deal crash out of the EU?

Now, eight months later, the CCJ (see last blog post) is bringing before Parliament legislation which breaks international law: Minister Bandon Lewis admitted as much today in the Commons. A senior government lawyer has quit his post because of this. And a senior diplomat compared the UK government to a “rogue state”. Even Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May condemned the move as leading to other countries not trusting the UK in any future trade negotiations.

 We Just Don’t Kerr

Oh, and a bit more about the “senior diplomat” mentioned above. He is none other than John Kerr, now a member of the House of Lords. He is a former British Ambassador to the USA and a former member of the European Convention which drafted Article 50, the procedure agreed by all 28 EU states at the time (including UK) for any member wishing to leave the EU. So not just any old “senior diplomat”, then.

You Have to Laugh

… even when crying, screaming and kicking the dog (no offence) might come more naturally.

It’s the following morning when I’m finishing this piece off. The oven repair engineer hasn’t shown up yet. So here we are: England, September 2020. The country you will never trust again. Break international treaties by all means, but don’t gather in groups of 7. Unless you’re at school. Or a premier league footballer. Or you’ve bred like a rabbit and got loads of kids – one for the Rees-Moggs there, I feel. Simples.

I’d like to end with some good news. I’d like to, but there isn’t any. So instead, here’s a few things that made me smile in today’s Guardian:

“Frosty the No Man”: thanks Marina Hyde, good value as ever, describing the UK’s chief negotiator with the EU.

turkey

And a few extracts from letters from readers, witty as ever: “our PM would have us waive the rules as well as rule the waves”, “perfidious Albion is living up to its name” and “Johnson’s ‘oven-ready’ deal was a turkey”. Thank you all.

Now, where’s that repair man?

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Beware the CJJ

…or, to spell it out, the Cummings-Johnson Junta.

Sliding Into Fascism

Back in the heady pre-EU referendum days of early 2016, I wrote a blog post which I entitled Sliding Into Fascism. Reading it again now, I was struck by how much has changed since then. The issues and concerns about which I wrote seem to have taken place so long ago. Some of the names are the same as now, but all in different jobs. I made reference to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan – remember her? – and her predecessor Michael Gove, then at the Ministry of Justice. George “austerity” Osborne was, of course, Chancellor of the Exchequer and, in a comment in reply to the post, even a junior minister in the Cabinet Office, “Matthew” Hancock, gets a mention.

Some of the themes in the post still ring familiar. The Education Secretary was making threatening-sounding statements to the teaching unions. Opaquely-funded so-called “think tanks” were allowed to continue their right-wing propaganda and fake news whilst charities’ freedoms to speak out were being curtailed. The House of Lords was being stuffed full of extra cronies of the Prime Minister.

Other measures reported in the post seemed all to point in one direction: namely, changes designed, bit by bit, to consolidate the Tories’ stranglehold on the electorate to perpetuate a de facto one-party rule. Since the, matters have taken a turn for a whole lot worse.

Under a Bus

The fact that the vast majority of the press are Tory supporters, often advocating policies and actions even more extreme that the government itself, doesn’t seem enough for the CJJ. Cummings’ power grab for political advisers effectively reporting to his command and the widespread sacking of senior civil servants is all part of the so-called “hard rain” falling on the Civil Service. Mark Sedwill from the Cabinet Office, Jonathan Slater from Education, Sally Collier from Ofqual are just three senior heads to roll in recent days. Veteran journalist John Humphreys weighs into the debate in an article for YouGov here. (His article also served as a reminder of a resignation early in 2020 following bullying by Home Secretary Priti Patel.)

The head of the FDA (the senior civil servants’ “trade union”) put it this way: “This administration will throw civil service leaders under a bus without a moment’s hesitation to shield ministers from any kind of accountability”. History shows that power without accountability always leads to greater and greater abuse of that power.

Taking the Central Line

Centre of Power

The United Kingdom as a state has always been centralised compared with many of its counterparts. The freedom given to the government of the day by our unwritten “constitution” fails to provide the checks and balances which act as a safeguard elsewhere. But the centralisation of power into Westminster has proceeded more rapidly since the days when Thatcher was PM. Local government has been reduced almost to a cipher whose job is to do the bidding of, and beg for discretionary funding from, central government.

The pandemic has thrown the results of all this centralisation into stark relief – but it has also shown how ineffective it is, compared to more successful countries (i.e. nearly all of them) in managing the effects of coronavirus. Early on, repeated failures in supply of PPE followed a centralisation of procurement in the NHS. Confusing and unsafe repeated changes of policy on wearing PPE were undoubtedly driven by rationing shortages rather than any public health “science” claimed by ministers.

Centralised Test and Trace has been the opposite of Johnson and Hancock’s “world beating” claim. The number of times this and similar phrases are used by those in positions of power show just how insecure they feel inside about the alleged “Greatness” of Britain. Puerile hysteria about blue passports and the offensive jingoistic lyrics of some “traditional” songs are further evidence of this insecurity.

Without a Trace

Where?

The main reason that Track and Trace has been such a disaster – failing to meet its targets nine weeks in a row – is the dogmatic obsession with running everything from Whitehall and subcontracting (and sub-subcontracting) everything to the government’s mates in the private sector. The announced U-turn on handing more work and power to local Directors of Public Health with the necessary local government spending is happening only painfully slowly. Hancock is acting like a drowning man, not wanting to let go of any scrap of centralised power for reasons of pure dogma and an authoritarian instinct. The true black hole into which power is being sucked goes by the name of the man whose eyesight needed testing on the road to Barnard Castle.

Oh, in case you missed it, here’s a couple of things about Dido “Dodo” Harding, head of Track and Trace and the bits of Public Health England that the government hasn’t forgotten about, you may find interesting. As CEO of TalkTalk, Marketing magazine described her in these terms: “TalkTalk boss Dido Harding’s utter ignorance is a lesson to us all.” So that puts her on a par with every member of the Cabinet. And the second thing is her horsey connections as a board member of Cheltenham Racecourse. Matt Hancock is MP for Newmarket. Health experts have reckoned that at least 20,000 lives could have been saved if the UK had locked down a week earlier. And what happened during that, literally, fatal week? Why, the Cheltenham Festival, of course. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Judge Dread

One other key plank in the “abolish all dissent” plans of the CJJ concerns judicial review. Gina Miller tweeted today: “Sneaky Govt! On 31 July they announce Independent Review of Administrative Law via a press notice. Tonight they quietly put on http://Parliament.uk the scope & who’ll decide if to act on recommendations. I’ve highlighted & abbreviated.” (Gina Miller is the lawyer who won two court cases between the 2016 referendum and the 2019 general election. The first ruled that the government must seek a Parliamentary vote of approval before signing the withdrawal agreement: this led to the notorious Daily Mail “Enemies of the People” front page. The second ruled Johnson’s 2019 proroguing of parliament illegal. Between them, they reinforced the principle that ministers are not above the law.)

Government announcement

Johnson has found a sympathetic chair in Edward Faulks QC. Now, the next bit you simply couldn’t make up. Faulks’s middle names are “Peter Lawless”. Yes, Lawless. His wife Catherine is a Tory councillor. Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland and Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove have taken upon themselves the role of deciding what the government will do following the Review. The intention is already clear. Johnson wants to put himself and his government above the law. These are the actions of a dictator and not those of Head of Government in a supposedly democratic state.

Wise Words

I’d like to end with some wise words. The first come from the leader writer in today’s Guardian, who writes of the Cummings-Johnson Junta as “an administration that refuses to delegate but fails to govern”. To those who find this all a bit boring, the second words come from no less a figure than Plato: “The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men”. That just about sums it up. You were warned.

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