Yes, with direct previous experience and knowledge of large UK Government IT projects, how they were integrated and how staff were trained, I feel I'm well plac

Yes, with direct previous experience and knowledge of large UK Government IT projects, how they were integrated and how staff were trained, I feel I'm well placed to comment harshly. "They" in this case was the UK Government, and part of the goal was creating secure backend systems specifically for the NHS as a data store, Public Health England would absolutely have access to it. Even the most basic of checks at the start of the project would have highlighted that Excel was not a proper solution for the application (Even if the developer(s?) had used the newer(?!?) XLSX format rather than XLS) - which highlights that there was no proper oversight as to how the system was constructed.