https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-four-issues-that-hav...
"Part of the reason the UK has had difficulty in meeting the 100,000 tests daily goal was because of its focus on centralised testing centres. In contrast to the robust and wide-reaching testing programmes in Germany and South Korea, the UK government initially decided to centralise all of its laboratory testing in a few large hubs"
And yes of course there's corruption and incompetence in government - in procurement as well as everything else. The fact that governments routinely fail to even write proper contracts to buy things should give pause for thought when considering how well they'd handle running the entire operation.
So, not an NHS decision but a political decision by the relevant cabinet minister? That changes the answer. It's important to distinguish between decisions made by "the NHS" (to the extent that this isn't just individual trusts, or NICE, or whatever) and political decisions made by the government which are ideological.
Tiny firms and shell companies are "an organisation which had no economies of scale, nor any demonstrated expertise in logistics in a competitive environment". DHL at least has a track record of large scale delivery.
> NHS insisted on only using NHS labs, despite being given direct commands to scale up testing as fast as possible
Unsourced, never heard this.