Scrapped £11.8m tracing app was a waste of money, Labour claims

LABOUR HAS accused Ministers of wasting taxpayers’ money after spending almost £12m on its abandoned coronavirus tracing app.

The Government has ditched plans to develop its own NHSX app and instead is looking to software created by Apple and Google to build it, even though the inhouse app cost £11.8m to design and was piloted for weeks on the Isle of Wight.

A spokesman for Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer told reporters that Ministers had adopted the incorrect approach. “The fact that £12m has been spent on an app which isn’t going to be launched is undoubtedly a waste of money.”

“What the Government should have been doing weeks ago is working with companies, looking at other international examples and trying to find a way – the fact that other countries have a nationwide app launched shows that this Government’s approach was wrong from the outset.”

A Department of Health spokesperson said: “We were absolutely right to invest in the Isle of Wight phase – it has provided us with valuable information that we will now use to build an app that is right for the British public.

“Our rigorous testing identified issues both with our app and the Google/Apple API, which did not estimate distance in the way we required.

“So if we had simply followed their approach we would be no further towards building a viable product.

“We are now working on a solution that brings together what we have learned as we develop a new version of an app to support the entire NHS Test and Trace service.”