UK government ‘failed the public’ during pandemic, Covid-19 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.

A bombshell report has revealed that the UK was caught dangerously off-guard by ‘preparing for the wrong pandemic’ and failing to invest in infrastructure to deal with it.

In its first report into preparedness for a pandemic, inquiry chairwoman Baroness Heather 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.’

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‘Despite reams of documentation, planning guidance was insufficiently robust and flexible, and policy documentation was outdated, unnecessarily bureaucratic and infected by jargon.’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 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.’

Baroness Heather Hallett said that UK citizens were ‘failed’ by the governments lack of preparedness.

‘I have no hesitation in concluding that the processes, planning and policy of the civil contingency structures across the UK failed the citizens of all four nations,” she said.

‘There were serious errors on the part of the state and serious flaws in our civil emergency systems. This cannot be allowed to happen again.’

Former prime minister Lord Cameron previously admitted it was a ‘mistake’ for his government to focus too heavily on preparing for a flu instead of a coronavirus pandemic. However, he still defended the cuts made to public services under his leadership.

Former health secretary Matt Hancock also revealed that the UK came “within hours” of running out of vital medicines for intensive care units at the height of the pandemic.

However, he said that the planning that had been undertaken in preparation for a no-deal Brexit meant hospitals were able to cope.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the UK Covid-19 Inquiry’s report ‘confirms what many have always believed – that the UK was under-prepared for Covid-19, and that process, planning and policy across all four nations failed UK citizens’.

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