UK Covid-19 inquiry live: report finds country ‘ill prepared’ to deal with pandemic | Covid inquiry
Key events
Baroness Hallett said there were “fatal strategic flaws underpinning the assessment of the risks faced by the UK.
She said: “The institutions and structures responsible for emergency planning were labyrinthine in their complexity.
“There were fatal strategic flaws underpinning the assessment of the risks faced by the UK, how those risks and their consequences could be managed and prevented from worsening and how the state should respond.”
UK ‘ill prepared’ to deal with pandemic
The UK was “dangerously mistaken” to believe that it was one of the best prepared countries in the world to respond to a pandemic, Baroness Heather Hallett said.
In 2019, it was widely believed in Britain and abroad that the UK was “not only properly prepared but was one of the best-prepared countries in the world to respond to a pandemic,” she said.
“This belief was dangerously mistaken. In reality, the UK was ill-prepared for dealing with the whole-system civil emergency of a pandemic, let alone the coronavirus pandemic that actually struck.
UK will face ‘immense suffering’ if not better prepared for future pandemics
Baroness Hallett said the UK will face “immense suffering” if it is not better prepared for the next pandemic.
Releasing her first report on pandemic preparedness and resilience in the UK, she said:
There will likely be a next time. The expert evidence suggests it is not a question of ‘if’ another pandemic will strike but ‘when’.
The evidence is overwhelmingly to the effect that another pandemic – potentially one that is even more transmissible and lethal – is likely to occur in the near to medium future.
That means that the UK will again face a pandemic that, unless we are better prepared, will bring with it immense suffering and huge financial cost and the most vulnerable in society will suffer the most.
Report calls for UK-wide civil emergency strategy
Among the recommendations in the report are:
The leader or deputy leader of each of the four nations should chair a Cabinet level committee responsible for civil emergency preparedness.
A UK-wide pandemic response exercise should run at least every three years and a new UK-wide whole-system civil emergency strategy put in place.
External “red teams” should regularly challenge the principles, evidence and advice on emergency plans
An independent statutory body to advise the UK government and devolved administrations should be set up and consult with voluntary groups and council-based directors of public health on civil emergency preparedness and response.
The findings about the UK’s structures and procedures in place to prepare for and respond to a pandemic are the first from the statutory inquiry into the Covid-19 and are based on six weeks of hearings last summer as well as the disclosure of thousands of documents.
Covid inquiry finds Hancock and Hunt failed to prepare UK for pandemic
Robert Booth
The former health secretaries Jeremy Hunt and Matt Hancock have been criticised for their failure to better prepare the UK for the pandemic in a damning first report from the Covid inquiry that calls for a major overhaul in how the government prepares for civil emergencies.
Hunt, who was health secretary from 2012 to 2018 and Hancock who took over until 2021 were both named by the chair to the inquiry, Baroness Hallett, for failing to rectify flaws in contingency planning ahead of the pandemic that claimed over 230,000 lives in the UK.
The UK government had focused largely on the threat of an influenza outbreak despite the fact that coronaviruses in Asia and the Middle East in the previous years meant “another coronavirus outbreak at a pandemic scale was foreseeable” and to overlook that was “a fundamental error”.
“It was not a black swan event,” said Hallett in a 240-page report that concluded: “the processes, planning and policy of the civil contingency structures within the UK government and devolved administrations and civil services failed their citizens”.
A key finding will centre on whether it was reasonable for the government to have focused planning for an influenza, rather than coronavirus, pandemic.
Another will be on how little planning was given to the need for, and consequences of, lockdowns.
The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group is calling for urgent reforms from the Labour government, including the appointment of a secretary of state for resilience and civil emergencies, a standing scientific committee on pandemics, crisis training for ministers and officials and the establishment of a “red team” to challenge pandemic preparations.
A spokesperson said:
Plans for a pandemic were fatally inadequate; they were outdated, poorly communicated across the government, disregarded the impact of inequalities and were primarily concerned with pandemic flu.
Such pandemic planning as there was did not address inequalities, and nothing was done to mitigate vulnerabilities caused by structural discrimination, institutional racism or health inequalities. Our loved ones, colleagues and communities paid the price for that failure.
Professor Smeeth also said that a pandemic treaty with other countries was “essential”.
He added:
We should find ways to collectively defend our whole planet and commit to sharing data, know-how and resources – such as surveillance tools, protective equipment and vaccines – on a global scale while we can.
We don’t know what the next dangerous outbreak will be, what we do know is that it’s going to happen. We need to seize the moment to agree new ways of working, and deeper collaboration so that we are better prepared for the next global disease threat when it arrives.
Academics have said it is a question of “when not if” another pandemic will hit, so it is hoped that recommendations, if implemented, could put the UK in a better starting place to face a new and unknown disease – known by many as Disease X.
One leading expert said that officials should adopt counter terrorism-like approaches to prepare for future pandemic threats.
Professor Liam Smeeth, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), told the PA news agency:
The key lesson from the first UK Covid Inquiry report is that if the UK waits for the next pandemic to emerge, it will be too late.
The fight against pandemics is like counter-terrorism, we must use similar approaches such as gathering and sharing the best intelligence on global disease threats and joining forces to confront outbreaks before they become pandemics.
Like terrorists, lethal viruses take no notice of national borders and can strike anywhere at any time.
We have to work with global partners to combat this global threat: this means not just improving our planning, surveillance, and ability to respond in the UK, but supporting those on the front line fighting outbreaks around the world.
Brenda Doherty, a spokesperson for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, a group representing nearly 7,000 bereaved people, said the report – the first of at least 10 planned in the next two to three years – would be “a huge milestone for bereaved families like mine”.
Doherty’s mother, Ruth Burke, 82, died from Covid acquired in hospital while awaiting discharge in March 2020 in Northern Ireland.
She said:
The years leading up to [this] have been draining. We know, however, that the inquiry’s recommendations have the potential to save lives in the future, if lessons have been learned from the loss of our loved ones.
The report is expected to highlight the UK’s focus on preparing for a flu pandemic instead of a coronavirus pandemic.
Lady Hallett may highlight how austerity measures led to public health cut backs, PA reported. She could potentially also comment on preparations surrounding personal protective equipment (PPE) and a government focused on Brexit.
Key politicians, scientists and health experts appeared as witnesses during the first module of the inquiry – which is titled Resilience and Preparedness.
Former health secretaries Matt Hancock and Jeremy Hunt were put under the spotlight during oral evidence sessions, alongside former prime minister Lord Cameron and former levelling up secretary Michael Gove.
Good morning and welcome to our live blog following the release of the first report from the long-running UK Covid inquiry.
It will be released at noon BST and will deliver an eagerly-awaited verdict on how Brexit and austerity affected the country’s readiness for the pandemic in which more than 200,000 people died in the UK.
Politicians including David Cameron, George Osborne and Matt Hancock are braced to face criticism about their decision-making and priorities in the run-up to the outbreak of the disease in early 2020.
I’m Tom Ambrose and will be following all the news and reaction. In the meantime you can read our excellent preview article from my colleague, Robert Booth.
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