MY HOLIDAY this summer, which went for a Burton along with everyone else’s, was to have involved a trip on the recently revamped Caledonian Sleeper.

I booked about a year ago, as new trains on the Highland section of the route were being rolled out. A very nice Scottish lady assured me their “teething problems” (a full-on euphemism — never in my life have I seen such a uniformly awful set of Tripadvisor reviews) on the Edinburgh and Glasgow routes would all be sorted well before my travel date.

They weren’t sorted of course. Hours of delays, loos with no water, hot breakfasts — or even the entire food offering — going awol, became almost the norm.

And so it was with alacrity that I placed myself at the front of the refund queue in March.

The Caledonian Sleeper franchise is held by Serco, a company with a chequered public service history. A Serious Fraud Office investigation after it charged the Ministry of Justice for tagging people who were dead, in jail, or abroad resulted in fines and penalties running into many millions.

Serco’s tentacles have now, of course, reached the Isle of Wight, since it is they the government have entrusted with the Covid test-and-trace effort, and with getting most tests turned round within 24 hours (currently ten per cent and falling).

Isn’t it going well? Tests which go awol like the hot breakfasts. Test centres with empty car parks while the website says “no availability”.

And, of course, symptomatic people told to criss-cross The Solent in a clear and obvious breach of Covid advice in a way guaranteed to threaten Islanders’ health.

The chief executive of Serco nowadays is Rupert Soames, brother of Tory MP Nicholas, both of them Churchill’s grandsons. This has not been Rupert’s finest hour.

In a leaked, and uncannily prescient, email to staff in June, he said: “There are a few, a noisy few, who would like to see us fail because we are private companies delivering a public service. I very much doubt that this is going to evolve smoothly, so they will have plenty of opportunity to say I told you so.

“If it succeeds … it will go a long way in cementing the position of the private sector companies in the public sector supply chain.

“Some of the naysayers recognise this, which is why they will take every opportunity to undermine us.”

He can count me in as a naysayer, though I take no pleasure in seeing test and trace fail, which it has, because it is sick people who are suffering, and next it could be any of us.

You may have noticed how Boris Johnson and Co always calls it “NHS test-and-trace”, an oratorical device used to ruthless effect by the late Rev Ian Paisley when embedding the perception of the IRA and Sinn Fein being joined at the hip. Never mention one without the other.

Operationally, test-and-trace is in fact Serco’s baby. And when we reach the stage, as I fear we soon may, when nearly everyone knows someone who’s had a brush with the virus, the noisy few are likely to become the noisy many; and it is not with the NHS but Serco, along with the decision-makers behind their appointment and all the other Covid chaos, that the buck eventually needs to stop.

* A spokesman for Serco contacted the County Press with the following statement:

"Serco does have a role in Test and Trace - we provide 50 per cent of the call handlers calling contacts identified by medical contact tracers provided by NHS Professionals or local health authorities, and manage approximately 25% of the test centres.

"But we are not responsible for the design or overall management of NHS Test and Trace, nor do we have role with its IT systems, the booking system for tests, the App, the laboratories, providing the test kits, or managing the data or the test results."