Minister defends £10m test bill
MICHAEL Gove has defended £7000 day rates paid to private sector consultants on the UK testing system.
Last week, Sky News reported Boston Consulting Group (BCG) was paid about £10million for about 40 consultants between the end of April and late August.
Gove admitted there is a need to reduce Government spending on consultants overall.
But asked if it was a good use of public money, he said: “Yes.”
The Cabinet Office minister continued: “It’s absolutely vital that we have all the expertise required from the private and the public sector in order to improve testing.
“We have a higher level of testing in this country than in any other European country, we’ve improving contact tracing all the time. Local health protection teams are doing particularly well in that regard.”
But he conceded: “We need to reduce our spend on consultants overall but in the meantime, we’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that we protect the NHS.”
Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth described the bill as “shocking”.
He said: “Testing and contact tracing is failing to keep the virus under control, which makes it even more disgraceful that such huge sums of money are being spent on something that isn’t fit for purpose.”