So much for the idea that reforming the quango state was a side issue or distraction. In a crisis, the inertia of our executive agencies can become lethal. Consider Public Health England (PHE). In theory, that vast bureaucracy exists for precisely such an emergency as the present one. It has more than 200 executives on six-figure salaries, some of them earning more than the Prime Minister. For years, its busybody officials have hectored us about pizza and fizzy drinks. Yet the moment a real public health threat comes along, they prove useless.
A paper by Matthew Lesh of the Adam Smith Institute sets out to explain why the UK has conducted fewer tests for Covid-19 than comparable countries. It finds that the most successful nations, such as Germany, South Korea and the United States, were quick to push testing out to private laboratories. In Britain, by contrast, there was an early determination to concentrate the samples at PHE’s own facilities. “The UK’s Covid-19 testing has been dangerously slow, excessively bureaucratic and hostile to outsiders and innovation,” Lesh concludes. “PHE has actively discouraged use of private sector testing.”…
