Public Health England to be scrapped, confirms Matt Hancock

Matt Hancock has said that he has “learned a lot” about “what needs to change” announcing that Public Health England is set to be scrapped

Matt Hancock has announced that Public Health England (PHE) is set to be scrapped as part of the government’s plans for a new organisation responsible for dealing with potential future pandemics.

The Health Secretary has confirmed this decision, reported over the weekend, in order to set up a new health body called the National Institute for Health Protection, which will also be tasked with working against the potential threats of biological weapon attacks, as well as infectious diseases.

Starting this week the government will be absorbing parts of PHE, including the Joint Biosecurity Centre, as well as the NHS Test and Trace programme, he announced at a press briefing on Tuesday.

This comes after Gavin Williamson, the UK’s Education Secretary, has resisted calls to resign as a cabinet minister, saying that he is “incredibly sorry for the distress” that the A-level and GCSE results issue had caused to students.

Baroness Dido Harding, who is currently in charge of Whitehall’s contact-tracing system, will temporarily be the head of the new health body and will lead the search for a successor to hold the position on a permanent basis.

This new change is coming as the latest number of daily infections stands at just over 700, which Matt Hancock explained was because “we must do everything we can to fulfil our responsibility to the public to strengthen public health in the UK”,

“If something is the right thing to do then putting off the change is usually the wrong thing to do,” he added.

Labour’s shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth said scrapping PHE was “desperate blame-shifting”.

“A structural reorganisation mid-pandemic is time consuming, energy sapping; it’s risky, indeed irresponsible,” he tweeted.

“And what an insulting way to treat hard-working staff who heard about this from a paywalled Sunday newspaper leaving them with questions and worries about their jobs.”

“The shift we need is towards a local test and trace system that delivers mass testing, finds cases, uses local expertise to trace and supports people to isolate with security.”

This comes after the way the UK government counts up how many people in England have died from COVID-19 will be changing amid concerns that the previous system that was in place is “misleading”. Figures for England will now be coming into line with the rest of the UK nations by imposing a 28-day cut off period for counting coronavirus-related fatalities.

Former Tory health secretary Andrew Lansley told Sky News last month that those in his own party calling for it to be axed were making “criticism born of ignorance”.

“Public Health England is an agency of the Department of Health,” he said. “The legislation, the law provides for direct control by the government, by the secretary of state of the activities of Public Health England.”

“So not only does the secretary of state have all the required powers, he also has all the required control.”