If the UK had spent more money helping people to self-isolate during the pandemic then fewer people would have been infected or died, the former head of NHS Test and Trace has said.Baroness Dido Harding, who was in charge of the programme in England, told the Covid inquiry she repeatedly argued to increase financial support, but was “frustrated” by the response of then chancellor, Rishi Sunak.”There was an intransigence that I think was very sad,” she said in her evidence.On 28 September 2020, the government did bring in a £500 self-isolation payment for low income workers on state benefits who were told to stay at home after being in contact with an infected person.A parallel scheme of discretionary payments was set up by some local authorities to support those outside the welfare system.In her evidence, Baroness Harding said the UK spent proportionally “much less than other developed countries enabling disadvantaged people to self-isolate”.”If we had allocated more of the NHS Test and Trace budget to isolation support, I strongly suspect that fewer would have died and infection rates would have been lower with all the benefits that would have brought,” she said in her witness statement.”It’s certainly the thing that I wished I had succeeded in persuading ministers to do,” she added in the hearing.”But I wasn’t the decision maker. The decision maker in this was the chancellor and at every opportunity, from June [2020] onwards, the chancellor rejec …
