This week the government duped us.

It spun that its failed national contact tracing scheme was transforming into a proper local system.

& the media bought the spin.

Save this thread, so when in a couple of months you ask why tracing STILL not working, you have receipts!

1/n

The Dept of Health announced: "NHS Test & Trace will provide local authorities with a dedicated team of contact tracers for local areas...[&] will move from 18k to 12k contact tracers on 24 Aug with remaining teams to be deployed as part of dedicated local Test & Trace teams" 2/n

The Times reported the changes to #TestAndTrace as follows. But this was wrong, as I'll come on to. 3/n

The Financial Times was also misled. They reported the #TestAndTrace changes like this. But this was also wrong. 4/n.

The Guardian was misled too. They reported it this way. Again, this is not what is happening #TestAndTrace. 5/n

The Mirror got it wrong too, as I'll reveal in a moment. #TestAndTrace 6/n

And so did the Sun. This is not what is happening, I've discovered. #TestAndTrace 7/n

The BBC's story was also incorrect, or at the very least, extremely misleading, in line with the misleading spin from government. #TestAndTrace 8/n

Full disclosure - we at @opendemocracy got it wrong too, initially. This is what I wrote on Tuesday. This is not what's happening. As with all the other journos above, it *seemed* to be the logical interpretation of the government's statements...

BUT I still had questions... 9/n

Why wouldn't government say if they were going to reduce the next tranche of the extended Serco/Sitel contracts - up to half a billion pounds - at all? Or say anything clear about what *exactly* (cash? staff?) was being rediverted to councils as per spin? It smelled fishy.

10/n

So I quizzed the Dept of Health & Serco hard -

& they admitted that *none* of their 12,000 remaining 'army' of national contact tracers are gonna be dedicated to local tracing.

tho £millions stay rolling...

Here's what's *really* happening.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/government-u-turning-on-the-u-turn-on-local-covid-contact-tracing/

11/n

My story above includes a bit of explanation about how they pulled this sleight of hand, which basically is about relying on existing public and Public Health England workers, oh and volunteers, to cover over the gaping holes in the private contracts (sound familiar?!)

12/n

We have all been played for fools...

The government has relied on the fact that hardly anyone understands their labyrinthine system (even the call handlers working in it, who don't actually know who they're supposed to report cases to) and their obscure terminology.

13/n

They've relied on the the fact that til recently most of the media has been lax at asking questions about outsourcing, questions that go beyond the 'NHS' label to uncover who is doing what, esp when answers rarely seem to make much sense from a health point of view.

14/n

But when local outbreaks are mushrooming, local economies are suffering, & people are getting sick/dying, we have to keep asking the right questions, keep sniffing if it doesn't quite add up.

Because dishonest government spin won't fix this mess.

Thanks for reading!

TL:DR; England’s army of 12,000 contact tracers is *not* going to be “assigned to local authorities” (FT), “deployed regionally to work with councils” (Times), “focus on specific areas” (Guardian), or any other similar messages you heard from entire media this wk. We were duped.

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