England’s test-and-trace system has “failed” to deliver on its main objectives despite its “eye-watering” multi-billion-pound budget, a UK Parliamentary committee has said. In a damning report published on Wednesday, the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons said the mass testing scheme “has not achieved its main objective to help break chains of COVID-19 transmission and enable people to return towards a more normal way of life” despite being handed an “eye-watering” budget of £37 billion ($51 billion) over two years. The scheme, known officially as the NHS Test and Trace Service (NHST&T), has been one of the most expensive health programmes delivered in the pandemic, costing nearly 20 percent of the entire 2020–21 budget of the National Health Service (NHS) in England. But the committee said its “outcomes have been muddled and a number of its professed aims have been overstated or not achieved.” The system has “failed to deliver …