Duncan Selbie, chief executive of PHE, confirmed plans to merge the body with the NHS Test and Trace programme
Public Health England’s boss has revealed he is ‘sorry beyond words’ for staff finding out the beleaguered agency was getting broken-up through media reports.
Duncan Selbie, chief executive of PHE, confirmed Number 10’s controversial plans to merge the body with the NHS Test and Trace programme to create a new task-force designed to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a leaked message to staff addressing the rumours, Mr Selbie revealed the decision to scrap the agency was briefed to journalists before he even had chance to tell the 5,500-strong workforce himself.
PHE — an agency underneath the Department of Health — was accused of being resistant to using private labs to ramp up testing, causing crucial delays at the start of the pandemic.
It was also blamed for the decision to abandon mass testing and tracing because of a lack of capacity, as well as being too slow to share in-depth coronavirus data with local authorities trying to fight outbreaks.
But Mr Selbie has already denied PHE was responsible for Britain’s mass coronavirus testing shambles. He said a national diagnostic testing scheme was ‘never our role’ and pointed the finger at the Department of Health.
In his message to staff, he added: ‘Any organisation that says it got everything right is wrong and no public health body enters a pandemic expecting to look the same as a consequence.’
Matt Hancock is expected to confirm plans to break-up PHE later this week to create the National Institute for Health Protection, which is likely to become effective within weeks — in time for any potential second wave this winter.
It is set to be modelled on Germany’s Robert Koch Institute, renowned for its strong reputation for the quality of its research on infectious diseases.
A Downing Street spokesperson today said ministers will ‘continue to work closely’ with PHE, saying it had an ‘important role’ in response to the pandemic but adding that the government must ensure it is ‘fit to cope’.
Critics have accused ministers of making PHE a scapegoat for No 10’s failures, saying PHE is under the direct control of the Department of Health and ‘responsibility lies firmly with the current government’.
Matt Hancock is expected to confirm plans to break-up PHE later this week to create the National Institute for Health Protection, which is likely to become effective within weeks — in time for any potential second wave this winter
PHE was made in 2013 under the Conservatives’ NHS reorganisation. It replaced the Health Protection Agency (HPA).
The agency says on its website it is ‘operationally autonomous’.
Government papers show it was ‘responsible for ensuring that there are effective arrangements in place for preparing, planning and responding to emergencies’.
The same documents, published before it was created in 2012, make clear the Department of Health will hold it to account for its performance.
Under the plans to break-up PHE, its anti-obesity strategy will also be handed over to local councils and GPs, who are being encouraged to intervene to encourage people to lose weight.
Meanwhile the Health and Safety Executive, run by Tory MP Sarah Newton, will assist companies in getting more staff back to work.
Tory peer Baroness Harding, the ex-TalkTalk boss and current head of NHS Test and Trace, is being tipped to lead the new health protection organisation.
Mr Selbie discussed the rumours, first reported by the Sunday Telegraph, in his note to staff.
The message, seen by the Health Service Journal , says: ‘I am sorry beyond words at the way that decisions about our future have been briefed to the media before I have had the chance to explain them.
‘The Prime Minister and Secretary of State wish to recreate an organisation with a sole focus on health protection and to bring together our health protection services with the budgets and people of the NHS test-and-trace programme to create a new national institute for health protection.
‘The aim is to boost our unique scientific capability and world leading health protection expertise with much needed new investment.
‘The future arrangements for delivering everything else we do for the country including on health improvement and our corporate services will be worked through over the coming weeks and months and will, of course, include formal consultation and the proper HR processes to ensure this is handled transparently and fairly.’
It adds: ‘Any organisation that says it got everything right is wrong and no public health body enters a pandemic expecting to look the same as a consequence.
‘However, no one remotely close to our work of the past eight years, and since January on the pandemic would agree with the headlines that this change reflects ‘pandemic failure’ on our part.
‘Certainly this is not what the Secretary of State believes or says in public or private.
‘No public body has done more to protect the health of the people than PHE nor has more reason to be proud of its contribution.
Public Health England (PHE) has denied it was responsible for mass Covid-19 testing shambles and says the Department of Health was to blame. Pictured: A swab test in Stone, England, July 29
‘Equally on health improvement over the years on cancer, tobacco, obesity and air quality amongst much more, and crucially in support of our colleagues in local government, the NHS and our work internationally on behalf of the UK.’
Responding to reports that Public Health England is to be replaced, a No 10 spokesman said: ‘We have always said we must learn the right lessons from the crisis and act to ensure Government structures are fit to cope.
‘But I would make the point that PHE have played an integral role in our response to this unprecedented pandemic, working on important issues such as detection, surveillance, contact tracing and testing.’
The axing of PHE follows reports that the government has been frustrated with the agency during the coronavirus crisis.
Speculation about the body’s future began last month after Boris Johnson complained that some parts of the Government responded ‘sluggishly’ to the outbreak.
The Prime Minister did not name PHE in his speech – but sources told The Daily Telegraph that they believed he was referring to the beleaguered agency.
On March 12 the Government announced it would no longer test everybody who was thought to have coronavirus.
It was also revealed that it did not have the capacity to track contacts of the majority of cases to try and stop the spread of the disease.
PHE has since said both were scrapped because they were no longer the most useful strategies, as opposed to a lack of capacity.
The decision was branded disastrous and a major factor to Britain’s outbreak, which has killed 40,000 people.
Among PHE’s alleged failures are that – according to another source – it has been ‘too slow’ and forced the Government to intervene to take over some of its functions.
And the Joint Biosecurity Centre, which was set up at the beginning of June and determines the UK’s COVID-19 alert level, was reportedly established to do the job PHE should have been doing.
Ex-Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said on Sunday: ‘The one thing consistent about Public Health England is that almost everything it has touched has failed.’
Chair of the Commons science and technology committee Greg Clark said that PHE members were ‘very opaque’ about their role.
When testing was finally ramped up to reach all people with symptoms on May 18, it involved private companies Deloitte and Serco.
Scientists in private labs, universities and research institutes across the country said in April that their offers to help with coronavirus testing had fallen on deaf ears.
Only eight PHE laboratories and some in NHS hospitals were being used to analyse tests during the start of the crisis.
‘Little ship’ labs had tools to process tests and could have increased testing capacity rapidly if officials had agreed to work with them, they said.
But it took Britain until the end of April to manage more than 100,000 tests in a day. Germany had been managing the feat for weeks by utilising private laboratories.
Number 10 was eventually pressured into abandoning the centralised approach and urged the wider science industry to help boost capacity.
One top scientist said NHS hospitals could have devised their own coronavirus tests but were ‘fearful of upsetting Public Health England’.
But PHE claimed it did not ‘constrain or seek to control any laboratory either public, university or commercial from conducting testing for Covid-19’.
It claimed that it requested officials changed testing methods in January to allow for any testing facility to conduct diagnostic tests.
Ministers are also furious with PHE for counting all deaths from Covid, rather than just those within the first 28 days of contracting the virus.
The counting method has now been switched to the 28-day method, in line with the rest of the UK. Around 5,000 deaths were knocked off the total.
But scientists and NHS leaders said yesterday if ministers are unhappy with PHE’s performance they have only themselves blame.
Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, representing NHS trusts, said it is under ‘direct control’ from DHSC.
He said: ‘Whilst it might be convenient to seek to blame PHE’s leadership team, it is important that the Government reflect on its responsibilities as well.’
Dr Amitava Banerjee, from University College London, added: ‘If PHE has fallen short, responsibility lies firmly with the current Government and health ministers.’
Dr Michael Head, senior research fellow in global health at Southampton University, poured scorn on suggestions Baroness Harding could head up the new body.
He said the idea ‘makes about as much sense as (chief medical officer) Chris Whitty being appointed the Vodafone head of branding and corporate image’.
The union Unite said PHE is being used as a ‘fall guy’ for the Government’s Covid-19 failings, while the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) said that ‘scapegoating PHE is unfair and potentially dangerous’.
STEPHEN GLOVER: Yes, axe hopeless health and exams quangos. But are bungling ministers really any better?
A hard rain is coming, promised Dominic Cummings, the PM’s chief adviser, in June, borrowing from Bob Dylan.
He meant that inefficient parts of the civil service and complacent senior officials should watch out.
Good. One early target is Public Health England, which mishandled Covid-19 testing, and told care homes not to worry about the virus when it was about to sweep through them.
Let Mr Cummings’s hard rain fall on them all, so that the overpaid, unaccountable and not infrequently arrogant people who run them end up thoroughly drenched. But the biggest rainstorm on record will be of little use unless some rain falls elsewhere. It needs to bucket down on government ministers — and on the Prime Minister himself
An announcement that this dysfunctional organisation will be chopped is expected soon.
Blunder
I hope Mr Cummings’s revolution won’t spare the educational quango Ofqual, which on Saturday withdrew the criteria necessary to challenge A-level grades hours after putting them on its website, thereby throwing already bewildered children into even greater confusion.
This is the same Ofqual that came up with the wheeze of applying an unfathomable algorithm to predicting A-level results, which has particularly penalised high-achieving pupils in ordinary state schools.
Please let this incompetent organisation go the same way as Public Health England and a host of other quangos and bodies that blunder around disastrously in people’s lives.
People are seen arriving into St Pancras hours before quarantine restrictions were introduced. Tens of thousands of tourists drove desperately through the night, or forked out extortionate sums for air tickets, to meet the deadline
Let Mr Cummings’s hard rain fall on them all, so that the overpaid, unaccountable and not infrequently arrogant people who run them end up thoroughly drenched.
But the biggest rainstorm on record will be of little use unless some rain falls elsewhere.
It needs to bucket down on government ministers — and on the Prime Minister himself. For they are ultimately responsible for a series of mishaps and fiascos.
That’s the weakness of Mr Cummings’s theory. It assumes that, once an efficient No 10 and its pet ministers take control, the failures of the Government will decline. Not while the likes of Education Secretary Gavin Williamson remain on the scene.
Mr Cummings and the Prime Minister’s private office will soon move into a new control centre in Whitehall that has been compared to Nasa. It will be like Nasa on one of its bad days, with rockets going astray, unless there is a political shake-up at the top.
Let’s deal with the appalling Mr Williamson a little later, and concentrate first on the mess the Government has created by imposing a 14-day quarantine on travellers returning from France.
I’ll accept, because Covid-19 infection rates are slightly higher in France than in Britain, that some sort of quarantining is necessary — though one could certainly debate the point without fear of being thought unreasonable.
What was outrageous, though, was the speed with which new rules were applied.
Tens of thousands of tourists drove desperately through the night, or forked out extortionate sums for air tickets, to meet the deadline. This had been thoughtfully set at 4am on Saturday morning.
Students are pictured above at a protest in London against the A-Level grading fiasco. It’s a mess entirely of the Government’s making, which is causing thousands of children and parents needless heartache. The pattern will almost certainly be repeated when GCSE results come out on Thursday
You’d think a plague had broken out on the other side of the Channel, and the very survival of Great Britain depended on everyone returning pronto. In fact, France’s 14-day rolling average is 32 cases per 100,000 people, compared to 18.5 in the UK. Not a huge difference.
Couldn’t British travellers have been given a little more time? No, because Scotland’s bossy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, supported by her Welsh counterpart, demanded the Saturday morning cut-off and Transport Secretary Grant Shapps caved in.
Out of a UK population of 67 million, 56 million live in England. Are those of us south of the Border now required to do what Scotland’s control-freakish, semi-socialist leader dictates? Evidently.
The Government showed scant consideration for ordinary people enjoying a holiday. Its sweeping Covid powers seem to have gone to its head. Think of the enormous — and unnecessary — stress and strain it created. This was no way for the State to treat law-abiding citizens.
One can say the same about Mr Williamson’s mishandling of A-levels. He had months to work out the fairest system possible, but instead accepted Ofqual’s idiotic algorithm, which has penalised some bright state school pupils.
After the Scottish government ditched a similar scheme, he panicked, and said last week that students unhappy with their results could appeal on the basis of their mock exams. Ofqual apparently qualified this on Saturday afternoon, before withdrawing its guidance for an unknown period.
It’s a mess entirely of the Government’s making, which is causing thousands of children and parents needless heartache. The pattern will almost certainly be repeated when GCSE results come out on Thursday.
The truth is that Mr Williamson isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. During his stint as Defence Secretary, he suggested sending our new aircraft carrier to the South China Sea, saying that Britain was prepared to use ‘lethal’ force to deter countries that ‘flout international law’. What, including China?
Dousing
In May 2019 he was sacked over an alleged leak before being reinstated as a Cabinet Minister by Boris Johnson seven weeks later.
His qualification? He twisted the arms of Tory MPs to help get Mr Johnson elected party leader, just as he once plotted on behalf of David Cameron and Theresa May.
Such a man shouldn’t be Education Secretary. He was appointed because he is an expert in the dark arts — though absolutely nothing else — and is useful to the Prime Minister. But not to the children of this country.
Gavin Williamson (above) had months to work out the fairest system possible, but instead accepted Ofqual’s idiotic algorithm, which has penalised some bright state school pupils
Several gallons of hard rain should fall on Mr Williamson, and a lesser quantity on Mr Shapps. And I’m afraid Health Secretary Matt Hancock could do with a good dousing.
For, although he is perhaps ten times brighter than Mr Williamson, Mr Hancock can’t escape responsibility for the many errors of Public Health England (PHE), which he is now rightly packing off to the knacker’s yard.
He accepted its calamitous decision to stop testing people with Covid-19 symptoms in mid-March, and didn’t counter PHE’s advice, in force until March 13, that it was ‘very unlikely that anyone receiving care in a care home or the community will become infected’. He has never apologised.
Boris himself shouldn’t escape a soaking. He has promoted the likes of Gavin Williamson, either in return for political support or to reward them for having backed Brexit, though interestingly the slippery Mr Williamson didn’t.
Rejected
Zac Goldsmith, who falls into both categories, was rewarded by Mr Johnson with a peerage and the post of Environment Minister, despite having been rejected by the electors of Richmond.
Meanwhile, able former ministers, such as former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, languish on the backbenches either because their faces don’t fit, or they voted Remain, and several talented middle-ranking ministers are not promoted. Are they considered too independent minded?
The PM must, of course, take responsibility for the mistakes over which he has presided. And he has been guilty of quite a few himself, not least missing five consecutive Cobra meetings in late January and early February when plans for combatting the pandemic were discussed.
So, yes, Boris’s mop deserves a deluge of hard rain, and I dare say the supercilious Dominic Cummings — so eager to point out the deficiencies of others — does too. There is an absence of good sense at the top of this Government.
It’s wonderful that Public Health England is being broken up, and let’s hope Ofqual follows suit. But getting rid of bungling officials isn’t going to save us if those who govern us also fail.