Britain has let its citizens down by leaving the nation inadequately prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic, due to faulty planning and failures by ministers and scientific experts, a public inquiry concluded in a scathing report on Thursday.
The UK recorded one of the highest Covid death tolls in the world, with more than 230,000 deaths by December 2023, while the country’s finances are still suffering from the economic consequences.
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered an inquiry in May 2021, and its first report, which examined the country’s preparations for the outbreak, was damning.
“Some of the financial and human costs could have been avoided if the UK had been better prepared for the pandemic and more resilient,” inquiry chair, former judge Heather Hallett, said in the report.
“The inquiry has no hesitation in concluding that the processes, planning and policy of the civil contingency structures within the UK Government and the devolved administrations and the civil service are failing its citizens.”
The inquiry found there was a “lack of adequate leadership” and “group-think” had clouded expert advice. Ministers were not provided with a sufficiently broad range of opinions and then failed to adequately challenge those they received.
The flawed 2011 strategy, which based the country’s preparedness for such an emergency, prepared for only one type of pandemic – influenza.
The report said this strategy was outdated, focused on dealing with the impact of the pandemic rather than preventing its spread, and did not take into account the economic and social impact. This strategy was almost abandoned at the first encounter with Covid.
“The Secretary of State for Health … who pursued this strategy, the experts and officials who advised him to do so, and the governments of the crippled nations that adopted it, are all responsible for failing to investigate and correct these flaws,” the report said.
Radical reform
Hallett made 10 recommendations, stating that preparing for a civil emergency should be viewed in the same way as preparing for a threat posed by a hostile state.
“This must be reformed radically. No disease should ever be allowed to cause so much death and suffering again,” he said in his introduction to the report.
The first module of his inquiry examines only the UK’s preparedness, and subsequent reports will provide assessments of the more politically charged issues of decision-making during the pandemic against a backdrop of widespread allegations of government incompetence.
Johnson was forced to step down in July 2022 amid a string of scandals, including revelations about parties during the Covid lockdown, that ended his prime ministership. A parliamentary committee later concluded he had misled MPs about the parties.
Rishi Sunak, who was finance minister during the pandemic and later became prime minister, was also fined for breaking lockdown rules at the time.
Ahead of the report’s release, Brenda Doherty, from campaign group COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, said: “We know that to save lives in the future, lessons must be learned from the mistakes of the past.”
“Sadly, no one knows the true cost of the government not being as prepared as we are.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
