Virus app is just one more promise broken

THE key to lifting the lockdown wreaking incalculable economic and social carnage upon Britain was meant to be an all-seeing smartphone app. The technology, created from scratch by the NHS at huge cost, was to be the glittering centrepiece of a programme to track down and isolate anyone exposed to coronavirus.

With great fanfare, Boris Johnson promised the system – crucial to tackling the pandemic – would be ‘world-beating’. What extraordinary hubris!

Yesterday, humiliated Health Secretary Matt Hancock, tail between his legs, scrapped the scheme. Scarcely believably, the app did not work on millions of phones. This is not only a shambles, but a disaster.

A working contact-tracing app was vital not only for public health but also to awaken hibernating parts of the economy.

Without it, the Government might not ease the crippling two-metre rule – jeopardising countless businesses and millions of jobs.

Ministers must come clean. Why was the NHS trusted to design the app? The organisation’s record on IT projects is woeful. A version by Apple and Google will now be used. But why weren’t these firms, boasting the world’s best tech experts, approached first?

Didn’t alarm bells ring when GCHQ raised security concerns about the app? And why were privacy fears blithely ignored?

While the U-turn is embarrassing, it’s better late than never. Of course, battling Covid is devilishly complicated. Like much in this pandemic, ministers are learning as they go along. Mistakes happen. But the Government is giving the unenviable impression of lurching from crisis to crisis. If Mr Hancock can eventually deliver the app – the ‘cherry on the cake,’ as he put it – the benefits are incalculable.

But should we hold our breath? Ministers keep making, and breaking, promises.

Until then, Britain must tread water – with an economic tsunami bearing down.