UK Government and the civil service ‘failed’ the public, Covid inquiry finds

The UK Government and the civil service “failed” the public due to “significant flaws” in preparing for the Covid-19 pandemic, a public inquiry has found.

In its first report into preparedness for a pandemic, the UK Covid-19 Inquiry said there was a “damaging absence of focus” on the measures and infrastructure that would be needed to deal with a fast-spreading disease, even though a coronavirus outbreak at pandemic scale “was forseeable”.

The report found groups advising the government did not have sufficient freedom and autonomy to express different views and were often undermined by “groupthink.”

On Thursday inquiry chair Baroness Heather Hallett presented her report on how well the UK was able to face a deadly outbreak in the run-up to 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic swept across Britain.

In her foreword to the report, she said lessons must be learned and “never again can a disease be allowed to lead to so many deaths and so much suffering”.

A major flaw, according to the inquiry, was the lack of “a system that could be scaled up to test, trace and isolate” people.

The report added: “Despite reams of documentation, planning guidance was insufficiently robust and flexible, and policy documentation was outdated, unnecessarily bureaucratic and infected by jargon.”

The inquiry said it had “no hesitation” in concluding that the “processes, planning and policy of the civil contingencies structures within the UK government and devolved administrations and civil services failed their citizens”.

The report found:

• The UK “prepared for the wrong pandemic”, namely a flu pandemic which was “inadequate for a global pandemic of the kind that struck”.

• In the years leading up to the pandemic, “there was a lack of adequate leadership, coordination and oversight”.

• Ministers “failed to challenge sufficiently the advice they did receive from officials and advisers”, and they did not receive a broad enough range of scientific opinion and policy options.

• Groups advising the Government “did not have sufficient freedom and autonomy to express dissenting views”, there was a lack of challenge to what was said, and the advice was often undermined by “groupthink”.

• There were “fatal strategic flaws” in the assessment of the risks facing the UK, including a future pandemic.

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.

Lord Cameron conceded it was a “mistake” for his government to focus too heavily on preparations for combating a wave of influenza rather than a coronavirus-like pandemic.

More to follow....