Prisoners of the system

 

ike the detainee gouging repeated marks on their cell wall, I started making one little downstroke on a page in my notebook for each time the voice on the line intoned: “Thank you for waiting. Your call is important to us and will be answered by the next available agent.” The moments between were filled with computer-composed muzak so mind-numbing that my admiration for the obstinate inmate who keeps their sanity sufficiently to remember, day after day, to scratch that wall, began to equal that for the scientists who have developed our Covid-19 vaccines.

There were five full rows across the page by the time I decided that one hour of waiting was enough to prove that the organisation running the test system for those who come in to Wales from abroad did not rate my call as important. The packet containing my sample had been put in the relevant Royal Mail post box during the afternoon of 15 June. The email announcing the result finally came at 2.06am on the 20th. That lateness cost me three days of freedom.

From the point of view of the private company that holds this particular contract, my liberty was less important than the bottom line in its accounts. The steady hollowing out of the NHS – still “free at the point of entry” but with its services increasingly provided by profit-taking private subcontractors – is pushing it closer to the French model. There, private and public moneys mix more openly, all to the growing advantage of the private.