Covid inquiry says UK failed citizens with ‘misguided’ pandemic planning

Unlock Digest Editor for free

FT Editor Roula Khalaf picks her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The Covid-19 inquiry has found the UK “failed” its citizens in its response to coronavirus after planning for a “faulty pandemic”, with preparations for a no-deal Brexit distracting the state from potential public health crises.

Inquiry chair Baroness Heather Hallett said “significant failures” in pandemic planning by national and devolved governments since 2011 meant officials focused too much on flu and failed to learn from other countries.

Hallett found in the first report published on Thursday that this “groupthink” strategy was no longer effective when Covid hit in late 2019, saying the strategy was “outdated” and “almost abandoned at the first contact” with the virus.

“The UK got pandemic planning wrong,” she added in the 240-page report, which criticised former Conservative health secretary Matt Hancock and Jeremy Hunt for inadequate preparation.

“The processes, plans and policies… in the UK government and civil service and administration have failed to meet the needs of the people,” she said, describing emergency planning structures as “labyrinthine in their complexity”.

Calling for “radical reform”, Hallett also pointed to the impact of what ministers called a “re-prioritisation” of resources in the years before the pandemic.

At the time, civil servants put aside planning for potential public health crises to focus on contingency measures for a no-deal Brexit.

his recovery and preparation system “Continuous pressure” in the years before the pandemic, when officials were forced to stop “working on one potential emergency to focus on another,” the report said.

The official Covid inquiry is examining the government’s response to the virus which has shut down swathes of the economy, upended social life and so far killed around 230,000 people in the UK and infected millions more.

The programme is expected to run until summer 2026 and the first of nine modules will focus on the UK’s pandemic preparedness and the resilience of its institutions and public health at the end of 2019.

Hallett dismissed claims by British officials that evidence showed the country was the best prepared in the world to deal with the pandemic before Covid struck.

“The UK was woefully unprepared to deal with a catastrophic emergency, let alone a coronavirus pandemic,” she said, adding that the government had made a “fundamental mistake” by failing to learn from other countries’ experiences with coronavirus in previous years.

Evidence is that current and former ministers and senior officials have painted a grim picture about then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ability to make life-or-death decisions for the nation during the pandemic.

The UK entered its first lockdown on 23 March 2020, more than a week after Johnson’s senior advisers recommended the move.

Thursday’s report found that ministers in Johnson’s government had failed to
receive enough scientific advice and do not dispute the advice they receive.

The report concluded that if the UK had been better prepared, “some of the significant and long-term financial, economic and human costs of the pandemic” could have been avoided.

Hunt and Hancock, who were in office when the pandemic hit, have come under heavy criticism, with Hallett blaming all health ministers for relying on a flawed strategy developed in 2011 to respond to the flu pandemic.

She noted that during a year under Hancock’s watch, from 2018 to 2019, the main body responsible for pandemic preparedness stopped meeting.

During that same period, Hancock did not attend meetings of the National Security Council subcommittee responsible for pandemic response planning.

Hunt and Hancock have been contacted for comment.

Hallett called for “radical reform” of the preparedness plan, warning that “it is not a question of ‘if’ there will be another pandemic, but ‘when’” and that “a disease must never again be allowed to cause so much death and suffering”.

Of the 10 recommendations, Hallett said the government should establish an independent statutory body responsible for “whole system preparedness and response” across the UK. She added that she expected “all my recommendations to be implemented”.