The UK government largely wasted a mammoth 37 billion ($51 billion, 44 billion euros) on a test and trace programme that failed to control the spread of Covid-19 last year, a report by lawmakers said.

The government and its inexperienced head for the programme, Dido Harding, displayed “gung-ho confidence”, the chair of the House of Commons public accounts committee said.

“But in the end it massively over-promised for what it delivered and it was eye-watering sums of money,” Meg Hillier, of the opposition Labour party, told BBC radio.

“That is one of the biggest concerns — it is almost as if the taxpayer was an ATM machine. That lack of regard for taxpayer funding is a real concern for us as a committee,” she said.