Previous governments “failed its citizens” with its insufficient and outdated planning for a pandemic, the Covid Inquiry has claimed in a withering new report.
The 217-page report ripped into the ministers who which led the UK both before and during the pandemic, saying lack of preparations meant the disease caused more deaths and economic damage than it should have.
The inquiry, launched in 2022 by then-PM Boris Johnson, is meant to examine the decisions made across the country around Covid,
It has now called for “radical reforms” before the next, inevitable, pandemic.
Here’s a breakdown of the report’s seven main criticisms, and a look at what could happen next.
1. Planning for ‘wrong’ pandemic
Although the UK had been planning for a flu outbreak, “our preparedness and resilience was not adequate for the global pandemic that occurred”, the report claimed.
The inquiry suggested the UK had been planning for the “wrong pandemic”, and said the former health secretaries – Jeremy Hunt and Matt Hancock – failed to fix flaws in contingency planning before Covid hit.
“The UK government’s outdated pandemic strategy, developed in 2011, was not flexible enough to adapt when faced with the pandemic in 2020,” the report claimed.
The report also claimed the UK had assumed any future outbreak would be mild if it was a new virus.
It suggested the government and its advising experts were “lulled” into a false sense of security by the Swine flue pandemic of 2009 – and that’s how the UK ended up dropping its previous strategies to go with the “untested” lockdown policy.
2. Over-complicated and outdated planning
It also slammed the country’s “labyrinthine” emergency planning, saying the approach to risk assessment was “flawed”.
It claimed there was a “lack of attention” to the systems that would help test, trace and isolate the disease, while policy documents were “full of jargon and overly complex”.
3. ‘Failure’ to learn from the past – or the present
It added: “There was a failure to fully learn from past civil emergency exercises and outbreaks of diseases.”
And the government did not acknowledge the current state of the UK.
It said emergency planning “failed to put enough consideration into existing health and social inequalities”, according to the report.
After the findings were published, the chair of the inquiry Baroness Hallett added that the “UK lacked resilience” in 2020.
She noted that the country had high pre-existing levels of illness and general levels of ill health at the time as well, making it more vulnerable to the outbreak of disease.
“Processes, planning and policy of structures failed the citizens of all four nations,” she said.
5. Failures in government
The report took aim at the ministers, too, saying they “often failed to challenge the advice they did get” while their advisers “lacked freedom” to express their differing opinions, often leading to “groupthink”.
Ultimately, it concluded: “If we had been better prepared, we could have avoided some of the massive financial, economic and human cost of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
6. Brexit planning diverted resources
The inquiry said gaps in planning were identified in a 2016 cross-government training exercise – but these were fell down in priority.
“Social care, in particular, had been flagged consistently as an issue but had not been addressed,” the report said.
It said this lack of action came down to the government’s focus on “Operation Yellowhammer” which was the contingency planning for no-deal Brexit.
7. The next pandemic
Hallett also noted that it is a question of not if but when the next pandemic will hit – and are we ready?
She said another pandemic would be “more transmissible and lethal” and likely to occur in the near to medium future.
Hallett said: “Unless the lessons are learned and fundamental change is implemented, the human and financial cost and sacrifice of the Covid-19 pandemic will have been in vain.”
What happens next?
It recommended a “radical simplification” of the civil emergency preparedness and resilience systems, and “streamlining the current bureaucracy”.
It suggested implementing a single ministerial-level committee responsible for all civil emergency planning which is not just restricted to pandemics.
The inquiry also called for a new risk assessment, better data collection, a new approach to risk assessment and proposed holding a UK-wide pandemic response exercise.
It also suggested bringing in external expertise from outside the government to challenge “groupthink”.
The inquiry’s recommendations are not legally-bounding, but PM Keir Starmer said: “This government is committed to learning the lessons from the inquiry and putting better measures in place to protect and prepare us from the impact of any future pandemic.”
This report is the first of at least nine expected.
It’s not known how long the inquiry will last, as hearings are expected to continue until at least next year.