Cash to self-isolate would have saved lives, Covid inquiry told

If the United Kingdom had spent more money by helping people self-isolating themselves during the pandemic, then fewer people would have been infected or dead, said the former NHS and trace test.

Baroness Dido Harding, who was in charge of the program in England, told the cocovio investigation that she supported several times to increase financial support, but was “frustrated” by the then Chancellor’s response, Rishi Sunak.

“There was an intransigence which, I think, was very sad,” she said in her testimony.

On September 28, 2020, the government provided £ 500 self-insulation for low-income workers from state services who were invited to stay at home after being in contact with an infected person.

A parallel regime of discretionary payments has been set up by certain local authorities to support people outside the social protection system.

In his testimony, Baroness Harding said that the United Kingdom had spent proportionately “much less than other developed countries allowing disadvantaged self-isolate”.

“If we had allocated the NHS test and the trace budget more to support the isolation, I firmly suspect that less would have died and the infection rates would have been lower with all the advantages that would have brought,” she said in her witness declaration.

“This is certainly the thing I wanted to have managed to persuade the ministers to do,” she added during the audience.

“But I was not the decision maker. The decision -maker in it was the chancellor and on every occasion, from June [2020] Watch, the chancellor rejected the proposals. “”

Last week, the investigation was shown in the private newspaper entrances written by the chief scientific advisor, Lord Patrick Vallance.

He wrote at the time that it was the “instinct” of political decision-makers to use the “stick” of the application and fines to convince people to self-assure, rather than the “carrot” of financial support favored by the government’s scientific advisers.

After a meeting on July 27, 2020, he wrote: “Dido [Harding] Pushed to obtain financial support so that people are tested in low socio-economic groups.

“Rishi [Sunak] reacted strongly to this and said essentially: “Simply stop social interactions.” “”

Baroness Harding, a former retail and telecommunications executive which was appointed to direct the test and trace system in May 2020, said that the data of the first year of the individuals suggested by the pandemic were not tested because they were “afraid of the consequences of isolation”.

“To be honest, it was extremely frustrating,” she said to the investigation, adding that she had found reading messages at the time “quite painful”.

“We really tried to persuade ministers that [increased financial support] It would be a good thing, not only for the individual well-being of these disadvantaged people, but also economically, because it was one of the ways you may have less economic damage to the country as a whole, “she added.

She said that she felt that Chancellor Rishi Sunak had rejected his arguments as a “point of principle” because he did not want to create what could be considered a new social advantage.

“I do not think there was a quantity of data and analyzes that I could have put which would have changed my mind,” she said.

“I think you can hear my frustration as I say.”

Rishi Sunak was not called upon to testify in this three -week section of the Covid investigation, which envisages testing, tracing and isolation policies.

But, last week, Dan York-Smith, a senior treasury official, said that a number of economic measures were provided to support workers, including extensions to statutory remuneration and the leave program.

He said the Chancellor was particularly worried to create “perverse intensive” who could have increased the risk of fraud, or meant that some workers could be paid more to self-isolate than in wages.