What was claimed
The NHS Test and Trace app cost £37 billion.
Our verdict
The NHS Covid-19 app cost £35 million in the 2020/21 financial year. The £37 billion figure was the budget of the entire Test and Trace programme in its first two years.
NHS Covid tracing app did not cost £37bn
31 May 2023
As the NHS Covid-19 app prepared to close at the end of April, a number of posts on Facebook claimed that £37 billion had been spent on it.
One post on 27 April said: “NHS Covid app finally scrapped, £37 billion and it didn’t even work.”
Another on 6 May said: ”Can anyone explain how it cost 37 BILLION ! to develop “an app”….. for track and trace.” [sic]
But the £37 billion figure actually refers to the budget for the whole test and trace programme in its first two years. The cost of the app was about £35 million in 2020-21.
Inaccurate claims about the Government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic have spread widely on social media, and can damage trust in politics.
The £37 billion figure has been misused frequently on social media, as we’ve written several times previously. A Labour MP also made the claim in November 2022, and corrected himself after being contacted by Full Fact.
Honesty in public debate matters
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Where does £37 billion come from?
The £37 billion figure refers to the total budget allocated to NHS Test and Trace in its first two years, not just the app.
A National Audit Office (NAO) interim report in December 2020 said that the Government allocated £22 billion to the test, trace, contain and enable programme in 2020/21, with a further £15 billion for 2021/22.
However, according to NAO figures, not all the money was used. As of June 2022, approximately £25.7 billion had actually been spent on the entire Test and Trace programme, with an estimated lifetime cost of £29.3 billion.
The NAO said that of the approximately £13.5 billion spent on the NHS Test and Trace programme in 2020/21, £35 million was spent on the app.
The vast majority of the spending in that year was accounted for by testing (£10.4 billion).
The NAO has not published a report for 2021/22.
Image courtesy of John Cameron.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the UK Covid contact tracing app cost £35 million in 2020/21, £37 billion was the budget allocated to the Test and Trace programme in its first two years.