UK Edition
Britain's failed attempt to build a contact tracing app without the help of Apple and Google has put the UK "months" behind other countries and probably cost lives, experts have warned.
The Government had insisted for months that it could create a "world-beating" coronavirus app that would bypass the restrictions imposed by smartphone companies and be ready by mid-May.
But on Thursday ministers admitted they will be abandoning and replacing its system in favour of an approach that will allow it to work with the technology companies. This has lead experts to predict that the UK may not have a working contact tracing app in time for the winter, when a potentially more deadly "second wave" of the virus is feared.
Catherine Stihler, a former Scottish MEP and director of the Open Knowledge Foundation, a Cambridge non-profit which built a data sharing tool used by several governments, said the project had been a "missed opportunity”.
"We are now two months behind countries like Ireland and Germany to get this technology right," she said. "I am glad that sense has prevailed but why did we ignore what was happening in all these other countries? The solution was always there."
Dr Nathalie Moreno, a data protection and cybersecurity partner at the law firm Addleshaw Goddard, said the Government’s choice of app showed a "lack of action, lack of decision and lack of thought", adding that the delay had weakened Britain’s overall pandemic response, potentially leading to unnecessary deaths.
Dr Michael Veale, a data rights lecturer at University College London who helped create one of Europe's first contact tracing systems, also told BBC Newsnight that the U-turn had been "wholly predictable", saying he had first warned the Government on April 11.
Britain's test and trace initiative has been beleaguered by criticism from its inception, questioning both its privacy and the wisdom of ministers' decision to refuse the help of Silicon Valley.
Apple and Google, whose software powers almost every smartphone in the world, launched a privacy-focused contact tracing toolkit in mid-April that would let apps harness Bluetooth signals to log their contact with each other without storing data on a central server.
UK health officials said they needed access to that information to help them see who was falling sick and where, while privacy hawks raised concerns about the “centralised” system.
But a recent audit found that the NHS’s app, which was piloted on the Isle of Wight, could only detect one in 25 contacts on Apple phones, forcing a pivot to the decentralised approach pushed by Apple and Google.
Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, said on Thursday that there remained “challenges” with both approaches. The NHS app did not work well with iPhones, he argued, but Apple’s technology did not work as well over longer distances.
Questions about whether the NHS’s system may inhibit Britons’ ability to travel and fail to capture coronavirus exposure from travellers to the UK remained unanswered.
Dr Moreno said that problems with the UK's app programme had mirrored problems with its overall response to the pandemic, in which it "failed to understand what was happening to neighbouring countries", causing "weeks of inaction".
She stressed that contact tracing apps are not silver bullets, but increase the effect of national track and trace programmes. She added that the strong privacy norms of European countries would always have made their apps less effective than those in east Asia.
Italy, Austria and Switzerland agreed to a decentralised approach immediately and Germany changed course after privacy criticisms in what Dr Moreno described as a "show of leadership". Japan has also switched plans to launch a centralised app.
Australia, France and Norway have pushed ahead with a similar approach to Britain's. However, Australia's app was revealed on Wednesday to suffer the same problems with iPhones as the UK's did, while Norway's has been shot down by a court on privacy grounds.
France's app has only been downloaded by about 2.5pc of the population after more than two weeks, compared to 8pc within the first 24 hours for Germany's app. France's digital minister accused the two tech tech giants of challenging its "sovereignty".
Mike Laughton, a policy manager at the tech lobbying firm Access Partnership, said the face-off between Silicon Valley and some European governments could galvanise the "techlash".
"In Paris you have this view that Silicon Valley executives are dictating health policy... ministers have accused Apple and Google of making policy choices that have inhibited the French response to Covid-19."
But, he said, "what [companies] have to give to the UK and Europe, they also have to give to Iran and China... if they only made it available to one state or other, there would be incredible pressure on the business in other markets to make it available."