A hard rain that is good for our health

IT WAS meant to protect the health of a nation, instead it became a bloated, self-serving, quango that allowed a crisis to turn critical. Shed no tears over the passing of Public Health England. The advice given by so called “experts” at PHE before and during the Covid crisis is nothing less than a litany of mistakes and missed chances.

Initially, it decreed that mass testing wasn’t needed only to perform a U-turn weeks later. It also declared it was “very unlikely that anyone receiving care in a care home or the community will be infected”. That’s as unforgivable as it is inexplicable, and paints them in the same colours as deranged Army top brass in the First World War who ordered troops to go over the top into German machine gunfire.

Having been caught napping over testing that was seen to be working in other countries around the world it then turned down offers of help from commercial laboratories. Boasting on its website its

‘Is five veg a day on par with face masks?’

function is to “protect and improve the nation’s health and wellbeing” it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect it to have taken a keen interest in ensuring there were sufficient stocks of PPE such as gloves and masks – but again it failed lamentably. This despite a “dummy run” trial of systems and supplies in 2016 which identified this as being a crucial issue.

To add final and regrettably often fatal insult to injury, it was PHE that supported the herd immunity idea which held that the sooner 60 per cent of the population caught the virus and became immune, the better it would be. No one needs reminding as to the consequences of that.

With all these do-or-die levels of challenge, what do you suppose PHE does dedicate its time to? That’s right, lecturing us on what we should or shouldn’t eat and chasing obese children. Without doubt, the “5 fruit or veg a day” strategy is a wise one, but is it really on the same par as giving nurses or doctors face masks?

Similarly, their obsession with how much sugar or salt is lurking in our cornflakes is valid, but nowhere near on par with ensuring we had enough ventilators as the virus tightened its lethal grip.

Their pronouncements on the problem of obesity in our children would near enough fill a book, but there’s nothing like the same siren call for Covid tests.

This bunch of nannying no-marks enjoy an annual budget of £300million and legions of bosses enjoy 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, and critics were quick to question the timing of this decision. But as has been palpably demonstrated, this organisation simply wasn’t up to the job so why on earth stick with it?

In June the PM’S chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, channeled Bob Dylan as he talked about a hard rain coming to Whitehall. We can see some of the areas getting drenched, but this cannot be used as an excuse not to investigate where the Government has failed too.

Changing the name on the brass plate above the door achieves little. It’s the bungling that has been allowed to fester that needs to go, for the “health” of us all.