They spent 100 billion pounds on lateral flow tests alone. I enjoyed the free test kits as much as everyone else, but think of the infrastructure that could have paid for.
I thought it was £50bn and was the total allocated budget of NHS Test & Trace to include PCR testing and contract tracing, as well as LFT distribution etc. It has not been spent yet and with the current rolling back of testing the final cost should (hopefully) be well under that figure.
I still agree it's a gargantuan sum that could have been spent in many other important areas, but pandemic response is important too.
