The UK government largely wasted a mammoth £37 billion on a test and trace programme that failed to control the spread of Covid-19 last year, a report by lawmakers said today.

“But in the end it massively over-promised for what it delivered and it was eye-watering sums of money,” Meg Hillier, of the opposition Labour party, told BBC radio.
“That is one of the biggest concerns — it is almost as if the taxpayer was an ATM machine. That lack of regard for taxpayer funding is a real concern for us as a committee,” she said.