In sickness and in Public Health

Write to me c/o Daily Star Sunday, One Canada Square, London E14 5AP

SHED no tears over the passing of Public Health England. It won’t be missed.

The advice from its “experts” during the Covid crisis has been a litany of mistakes and missed chances. Initially it said mass testing wasn’t needed, only to perform a complete U-turn within weeks.

It also declared it was “very unlikely that anyone receiving care in a care home or the community will be infected”. That is as unforgivable as inexplicable.

Having been caught napping when testing was seen to be working in other countries, it turned down offers of help from commercial laboratories.

And it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect it to have taken a keen interest in ensuring sufficient stocks of PPE, such as gloves and masks. Again, it failed lamentably.

This despite there being a “dummy run” trial back in 2016 which clearly identified this as being a it is crucial issue. To add insult to injury, PHE supported the herd immunity idea – you know, the one that said the sooner 60% of us caught the virus and became immune, the better it would be.

No-one needs reminding of the disastrous consequences of that policy.

What do you suppose PHE dedicates its time to? That’s right – lecturing us on what we should or shouldn’t eat and chasing after obese children.

Without doubt, the

“five fruit or veg” a day strategy is good for all of us. But is it really on a par with giving our nurses and doctors face masks?

Similarly, obsessing over the levels of sugar and salt in our cereals was nowhere near as important as ensuring we had enough ventilators as the virus tightened its lethal grip.

This bunch of nannying no-marks has an annual budget of £300million, with legions of bosses on six-figure salaries.

But ask yourself this: For all that cash, apart from eating an extra apple, how has your life been improved?

This failing quango will be replaced by a new body, the National Institute for Health Protection. Critics were quick to question the timing of this decision. But as has been shown, PHE wasn’t up to the job. So why stick with it?

Back in June the Prime Minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, appeared to channel Bob Dylan as he talked about a hard rain coming to Whitehall.

While we can now see some of the areas getting drenched, this cannot be used as an excuse not to investigate areas where the Government has failed too. Changing a name above a door achieves little. It’s the brazen bungling that has been allowed to fester in some of the organisations that needs to be cut out – for the health of us all.