(Bloomberg) -- The UK urgently needs to overhaul preparations for civil emergencies following the failure of its pre-pandemic systems, the first report of the country’s Covid-19 inquiry has found.
Britain needs a new independent statutory body with responsibility for such emergencies, and a countrywide pandemic response exercise should be held at least every three years, according to a new report from the inquiry’s chair, retired judge Heather Hallett.
Leaders of the Conservative Party who governed at the time “failed their citizens,” with some of the human and financial cost potentially being avoidable if Britain had been better prepared, according to her report.
Hallett found that advice to the government was often undermined by “groupthink.” Matt Hancock, who served as health secretary at the height of Covid, and two previous holders of the role — Jeremy Hunt and Andrew Lansley — share responsibility for an outdated pandemic strategy, she said.
Some work to prepare for a pandemic was also delayed due to resourcing issues and the government’s contingency planning for a no-deal Brexit, the report found.
The inquiry, one of the biggest in British history, has already taken evidence from former prime ministers Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson. The chair of the inquiry has the power to compel the production of documents and call witnesses.
Thursday’s report is focused on how prepared the country was for a pandemic, with future publications set to assess various aspects of the response, including the test-and-trace system.
Wrong Pandemic
The belief in 2019 that the UK was one of the countries best-prepared to respond to a pandemic was false, the report found, with the country facing widening health inequalities and high levels of illnesses such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease. The health and social care system was also running either near to, or beyond, capacity.
“The UK prepared for the wrong pandemic,” the report said, as it had been focused on influenza. The country also hadn’t learned enough from past emergency exercises or outbreaks of disease, with its 2011 pandemic strategy outdated and “virtually abandoned” when the pandemic hit, according to Hallett, who is a cross-bench peer in the House of Lords.
Johnson has told the inquiry that the government underestimated the threat of the virus early in 2020. The former prime minister, whose downfall was partly attributed to breaking his own lockdown rules, admitted that mistakes were made when he appeared before the inquiry last year and apologized for the suffering experienced by Britons.
Families of the more than 230,000 people who have died with Covid in Britain have been a vocal presence during the inquiry, which is seen as a crucial mechanism to hold the government to account for failures that may have contributed to those deaths.
The new Labour prime minister, Keir Starmer, said the report “confirms what many have always believed — that the UK was underprepared for Covid-19.” The current government is “committed to learning the lessons from the inquiry and putting better measures in place to protect and prepare us from the impact of any future pandemic,” he said in a statement.
Public hearings from the inquiry are set to conclude by summer 2026. The next report, looking at decision-making and political governance, is expected to be published in 2025.
(Updates with Starmer’s comment in penultimate paragraph)
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