Breaking News – Test and Trace outrage

THE NHS is paying outside consultants up to £7,000 a day to work on the Test and Trace programme, leaving NHS key workers outraged.

The incredible weekly rate is more than the annual salary of a nurse, with some Boston Consulting Group executives helping to get the UK’s £12billion app system up and running earning the equivalent of £1.5million a year.

Nurses earn only about £33,000 a year.

The Government has already handed over £10million to 40 consultants to do four months’ work between April and August this year, whilst nursing staff struggle to make ends meet.

The US company has day rates for public sector work ranging from £2,400 to £7,360 for its most senior staff, making it one of the most expensive management consultancy groups in the world.

Although BCG is giving the Department of Health and Social Care a ten to 15 per cent discount, the rates mean they earn the equivalent of ten times the Prime Minister’s £150,000 salary.

Last month, the Government’s science advisers warned the promised world-beating Test and Trace system was having only a “marginal impact”.

At least 165 consultants from other firms are being drafted in to help with the new “moonshot” testing programme to deliver coronavirus test results in 15 minutes.

We see the potential for strikes ahead by NHS key workers.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said, “NHS Test and Trace is the biggest testing system per head of population of all the major countries in Europe.”