The first report by the official Covid inquiry has been damning about the UK’s seeming lack of preparedness for the pandemic. Much of the fault is seen as being institutional, but some politicians are mentioned in the 240 pages. Here are the main players:
Matt Hancock
As health secretary for almost three years, from 2018 to 2021, Hancock was at the helm as Covid hit but, as the report states, he inherited an inadequately prepared infrastructure.
When Hancock took over, his “day one” briefing from the health department’s chief civil servant included the idea that pandemic flu would be the biggest likely health emergency to strike, the report noted. This idea, based on a 2011 pandemic strategy, was a “flawed doctrine”, as Hancock told the inquiry.
However, the report concluded that Hancock shared responsibility with earlier health secretaries, as well as the experts and officials who advised them, and the UK’s devolved governments, for “failing to have these flaws examined and rectified”.
It added: “This includes Mr Hancock, who abandoned the [2011] strategy when the pandemic struck, by which time it was too late to have any effect on preparedness and resilience.”
Hancock allies said it was unfair to blame him for acting on the advice of experts.
Jeremy Hunt
Hunt’s role in the UK’s lack of preparedness for the pandemic was similar to Hancock’s, and was arguably bigger given he was health secretary for just under six years, from 2012 to 2018.
The report noted that Hunt could not remember being advised that the 2011 pandemic strategy should be revised, and that he had “no idea” why the experience of east Asian countries affected by the 2002-2004 Sars virus was not taken on board.
Overall, the 2011 strategy was “not subject to sufficient external challenge by either ministers or officials”, the report said. Saying that Hunt told the inquiry that in retrospect he and others “didn’t put anything like the time and effort and energy” into challenging the consensus, it added: “The inquiry agrees.”
It did, however, give Hunt some credit for challenging an assumption in a later pandemic planning test, 2016’s Exercise Cygnus, that intensive care beds would be emptied to accept flu patients, saying this helped create new protocols.
David Cameron and George Osborne
The prime minister and chancellor from 2010 to 2016 crop up a few times in the report in relation to pandemic planning, but arguably their most notable contribution was one that does not really get a mention: austerity.
The document cites eloquent testimony about the much-documented ways health inequalities meant Covid affected some people and communities much more than others. It also alludes to the fact that this did not happen in a political vacuum.
The UK “entered the pandemic with its public services depleted, health improvement stalled, health inequalities increased and health among the poorest people in a state of decline”, it cites two public health experts, Clare Bambra and Michael Marmot, as telling the inquiry.
While there had been predictions that the report might note the impact of the Cameron-Osborne years in creating this, it has no mention of the word austerity, and just a single use of the word poverty.
Boris Johnson and Theresa May
Johnson, the prime minister during the pandemic, is barely mentioned in this report, and May just once. But they face strong if implicit criticism – the idea that preparations for a no-deal Brexit might have impeded pandemic planning.
The report noted evidence from witnesses who said Operation Yellowhammer, intended to mitigate the effects of a possible departure from the EU without a trade deal, took up civil contingencies resources which could have been used elsewhere.
It concluded: “The fact, however, remains that the UK government’s preparedness and resilience system was, quite evidently, under constant strain. It was reliant on stopping work on preparing for one potential emergency to concentrate on another.”
