Labor MP wrongly claims £37billion spent on Test and Trace app

Anyone else remember the £37bn @MattHancock and @BorisJohnson et al blew on the Covid track and trace app that had to be thrown away? Never forget, never forgive.

Karl Turner MP, .

Labor MP Karl Turner recently claimed on Twitter that former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former Health Secretary Matt Hancock 'blew' £37billion on the NHS Test and Trace app.

As we have already written several times, this is not true. This figure was the budget for the entire NHS Test and Trace program in its first two years - not just the app - and the total budget was not used.

After being contacted by Full Fact, Mr Turner tweeted a correction clarifying that £37bn was Test and Trace's total budget, not just what was spent on the app.

The correction read: "To clarify, £37bn was for the total testing and tracing budget, not what was spent on the app alone (around £35m).

"These comments, which were not a deliberate attempt to mislead and which I am happy to correct, were about the government's overall poor response to Covid-19."

While the original tweet has not been deleted and has now been shared over 2,000 times, the correction has just over 10 shares at the time of writing.

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What is Test & Trace?

NHS Test and Trace was set up in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and included testing services, 'containment' activities (including identifying local outbreaks and supporting local responses), tracing services, as well as the NHS Covid-19 app.

The government allocated a total of £22 billion on the program in 2020/21, and a further £15bn in 2021/22, making £37bn in total.

The most recent figures produced by the National Audit Office (NAO) show that, as of the June 2022 update, £25.7bn would have been spent on NHS Test and Trace as a whole, with an estimated lifetime cost of £29.3bn.

A product report by the NAO showed that in 2020/21 the vast majority of £13.5bn was due to testing (£10.4bn). A relatively small amount - £35million - has been spent on the app over the same period.

It should be noted that the breakdown of NAO expenses only covers the first year of the pandemic. Comparable figures for 2021/22 have yet to be released, and it appears the NAO is currently not working on another report on more recent figures.

Image reproduced with the kind permission of Chris McAndrew