Health Secretary points finger at Apple over tracing app delay

Tech giant is accused of refusing to co-operate, as rival developers criticise Government obstruction

THE Health Secretary has accused Apple of refusing to co-operate with “democratically elected governments” after being forced to ditch the original version of the contact-tracing app due to issues with iphones.

Signalling the frustration of ministers towards the tech giant, Matt Hancock yesterday claimed that Apple was being “intransigent in the face of perfectly reasonable requests” as he highlighted previous rows over terrorism. With work now under way on a “hybrid” app, which will seek to incorporate components of the NHS version and one produced by Apple and Google, he also rejected claims the companies had not been consulted on the new plan.

However, ministers were themselves facing accusations of being obstructive last night as the developers of rival apps to the NHS version claimed they had been blocked and “treated like the enemy”.

Scientists working on alternative British apps claimed that NHSX, the technology unit responsible for the Government’s failed app, and the Ministry of Defence told developers their apps might distract attention from the official version when it was launched.

They include Prof Tim Spector, of King’s College London, whose Covid Symptom Study app has tracked the symptoms of 3.5 million Britons as well as patterns of infections across the country.

Prof Spector told The Observer: “We were hampered from the beginning, in March when we first contacted NHSX. They were very worried about our app taking attention away from theirs and confusing the public. Lots of signals went to places like the universities, my university, the charities and the royal colleges not to back our app because that would interfere with their one.”

Separately, Ian Gass, of Agitate, which set up Ink C-19, an app designed to make reporting symptoms as simple as possible, said he was approached by the Government in March and the interaction was “not friendly”. The row comes days after the Government was forced to abandon the original NHSX app after an internal audit found it could detect only one in 25 contacts on Apple phones.

While it performed significantly better on Android devices, the operating system used by Apple meant that a Bluetooth function in the app would not work properly on iphones.

Despite requesting Apple introduce a workaround to allow it work more effectively, Mr Hancock said the company had refused to change their system. Speaking to Sky News’s Sophy Ridge programme, he said: “I wish... that Apple had made the change that was needed for it to work on Apple phones in the same way that the original works on Android phones, but we will get there. It’s a perfectly reasonable point that people make which is that Apple have in the past also been intransigent in the face of perfectly reasonable requests from democratically elected governments to work with them on solving particular problems, whether that’s about solutions to terrorism or other technical problems.”

His comments appear to refer to a series of disputes between Apple and the US government over its refusal to unlock the phones of the San Bernardino terrorist in 2016 and the gunman behind a mass shooting at a US Navy base in January.

Last night a spokesman for Apple said it was “committed to working with the UK Government to help tackle Covid-19.”

They did not respond to Mr Hancock’s comments on terrorism.