Government ‘failed citizens’, says public inquiry, warning Covid agony could have been avoided
Words by ITV News Deputy Political Editor Anushka Asthana and Health and Science Produce Philip Sime
The UK government and every devolved administration "failed their citizens" by being ill-prepared for Covid, resulting in more grief, untold misery and economic turmoil than necessary, according to the devastating first conclusions of a major public inquiry into the pandemic.
The Chair, Baroness Hallett, made clear there was a failure of leadership across the board but named two former health secretaries, Matt Hancock and Jeremy Hunt.
Lady Hallett has called on the Labour government to implement urgent and "fundamental reform," warning of overwhelming evidence that another pandemic, which could be even more transmissible and lethal, is likely in the near to medium future.
“It is not a question of ‘if’ another pandemic will strike but ‘when’,” she warned, calling on the government to place preparations for another health crisis on a par with defence planning for potential war.
“The primary duty of the state is to protect its citizens from harm. It is, therefore, the state’s duty to ensure that the UK is as properly prepared to meet threats from a lethal disease as it is from a hostile force. Both are threats to national security,” she said.
And yet the UK was "ill prepared" and "lacked resilience," according to Lady Hallett’s report, that claims public services including health and social care were running close to, if not beyond, capacity with a slowdown in health improvement and widening health inequalities.
“The Inquiry has no hesitation in concluding that the processes, planning and policy of the civil contingency structures within the UK government and devolved administrations and civil services failed their citizens.”
The first 83,000 word report from the Covid Inquiry also concluded that if the country had been better prepared “some of the financial and human cost may have been avoided”.
Among ten recommendations is a call for a UK-wide pandemic response exercise at least every three years followed by a report, a Cabinet level committee led by the prime minister or his deputy, and implement a whole-system civil emergency strategy.
She also said the government should move away from “reasonable worst case scenarios” and instead assess a wide range of scenarios.
Additional recommendations include the use of external “red-teams” who could scrutinise and challenge evidence and policies, and the formation of an independent statutory body for whole-system civil emergency preparedness, resilience and response.
Lady Hallett admitted that preparing for a pandemic involves spending money on an event that "may never happen" but said that must be carried out. “The Covid-19 pandemic caused grief, untold misery and economic turmoil. Its impact will be felt for decades to come,” she finds.
“There must be radical reform. Never again can a disease be allowed to lead to so many deaths and so much suffering.”
ITV News spoke to Kim Nottage, whose mother died of Covid in a care home
Outlining the cost of Covid, the report does not just highlight the 225,000 deaths in the UK, but also the mental illness, loneliness, deprivation resulting from the lockdown, as well as the impact on children’s academic learning and social development.
Lady Hallett, who has listened to more than 100 hours of evidence, travelled the country, received 20,000 responses to a consultation, and whose team has scoured 103,000 documents, said the UK believed it was one of the best prepared countries in 2019.
“In reality, the UK was ill-prepared for dealing with a catastrophic emergency, let alone the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic that actually struck.”
Among her criticisms were:
The poor state of the nation’s health going into the pandemic, in which high levels of heart disease, diabetes, respiratory illness and obesity and general levels of ill-health made the UK more vulnerable.
Public services, including the NHS, running at and beyond capacity, which looks like implied criticism of the Conservative government’s austerity programme, although Lady Hallett does not use that word.
The UK prepared for "the wrong pandemic", namely an influenza pandemic, with an outdated strategy from 2011 that lacked adaptability.
That ministers, who themselves were untrained, were not presented with a broad enough range of scientific and policy options.
That scientific advisers were guilty of ‘groupthink’ and that the committees advising the government - including Sage - were not subject to sufficient challenge by ministers.
Hallet said there had been a failure within the planning to account for pre-existing inequalities and deprivation, and to appreciate the impact of such a crisis on ethnic minority communities and others with poor health or vulnerabilities.
Lady Hallett adds: “The Secretaries of State for Health and for Health and Social Care who adhered to the strategy, the experts and officials who advised them to do so, and the governments of the devolved nations that adopted it, all bear responsibility for failing to have these flaws examined and rectified.
"This includes Mr Hancock, who abandoned the strategy when the pandemic struck, by which time it was too late to have any effect on preparedness and resilience.”
Lady Hallett said she expected all her recommendations to be acted upon by the new UK government and the devolved administrations, saying she and her team would be monitoring this closely.
“If the reforms I recommend are implemented, the nation will be more resilient and better able to avoid the terrible losses and costs to society that the Covid-19 pandemic brought.”
Lady Hallett’s report includes testimonies from victims, including those who lost loved ones. Matt Fowler, co-founder of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, says that only 10 people were able to attend his father’s funeral and all were socially distanced. But 300 lined the streets for his procession.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said the Government will “carefully consider the recommendations” of the inquiry.
In a written ministerial statement, he said: “The Government’s first responsibility is to keep the public safe, and as Prime Minister I am personally committed to each and every family that lost loved ones, and whose lives were changed forever, that this Government will learn the lessons from the Inquiry.
“This means ensuring that the UK is prepared for a future pandemic, as well as the broadest range of potential risks facing our country.
“That is a top priority for this government and what everyone should rightly expect from a government working in their service.
“The Government is committed to working with our colleagues in the devolved governments, mayors and local partners as we carefully consider the recommendations in the report, as their efforts are vital to ensuring the resilience of the whole of the United Kingdom."
A spokeswoman for the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK group, speaking outside the inquiry, said the report did "not go far enough".
They said: “While the inquiry has diagnosed much of what undermined our response, Lady Hallett has not gone far enough in setting out how we can challenge, address and improve inequalities and capacity of public services as opposed to just understanding the effects of these failures”.
Saleyha Ahsan, an NHS doctor who worked and lost her father during the pandemic, said healthcare workers and the bereaved did not have a "voice" in the inquiry.
Jane Morrison from Scottish Covid Bereaved spoke of having to make the terrible decision of being with a loved one in their final days and then isolating or attending a funeral.
Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees from the Welsh branch of the charity described how a loved one was treated like “toxic waste” after dying.
“They are zipped away and you - nobody told us that you can’t wash them, you can’t dress them, you can’t do any of those things.” Brenda Doherty, a lead in Northern Ireland, added that after losing her “mummy” she wanted to remind people of the “human cost that we paid as bereaved people”.
British Medical Association chairman Professor Philip Banfield said: “This report reveals in all its true horror how appallingly under-prepared the governments were for the pandemic, that processes failed us as citizens, and that lives could have been saved."
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