Helensburgh MSP blasts governments over Covid-19 failings

The UK Covid Inquiry said both UK and Scottish governments "failed their citizens" by not doing enough to properly plan for the crisis.

It is the first of nine reports to be published by the UK Covid-19 Inquiry and examines the state of the UK's structures and procedures in place to prepare and respond to a pandemic.

Baroness Heather Hallett, the inquiry chair, is calling for "radical reform" as she makes 10 recommendations, including a major overhaul of how the UK government prepares for public health emergencies.

Baroness Heather Hallett published the report on Thursday (Image: Newsquest)

She found that former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s government had followed flawed UK resilience plans, without adapting them to meet Scotland’s needs.

Baroness Hallett described the UK as “ill-prepared for dealing with a catastrophic emergency, let alone the coronavirus pandemic” and noted that she had “no hesitation” in saying that civil contingency structures across the UK failed.

In her foreword to the report, Hallett said lessons must be learned and “never again can a disease be allowed to lead to so many deaths and so much suffering”.

The report found:  

• The UK “prepared for the wrong pandemic”, namely a flu pandemic. Furthermore, this flu plan was “inadequate for a global pandemic of the kind that struck”.

• In the years leading up to the pandemic, “there was a lack of adequate leadership, coordination and oversight”. Ministers “failed to challenge sufficiently the advice they did receive from officials and advisers”, and they did not receive a broad enough range of scientific opinion and policy options.

• Groups advising the Government “did not have sufficient freedom and autonomy to express dissenting views”, there was a lack of challenge to what was said, and the advice was often undermined by “groupthink”.

• The institutions and structures responsible for emergency planning throughout government were “labyrinthine” in how complex they were.

• There were “fatal strategic flaws” in the assessment of the risks facing the UK, including a future pandemic.

• Emergency planning generally failed to account for how the vulnerable would be looked after, as well as those at most risk due to existing poor health, and the deprivation and societal differences already present in the UK.

• There was a “failure to learn sufficiently” from past exercises designed to test the UK’s response to the spread of disease.

• The “recent experiences of Sars and Mers meant that another coronavirus outbreak at pandemic scale was foreseeable. It was not a "black swan" event.

• The absence of such a scenario from the risk assessments was a fundamental error of the Department of Health and Social Care and the Civil Contingencies Secretariat.

• The UK government and devolved administrations could and should have "assessed the risk of a novel pathogen to reach pandemic scale".

• Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, “there was no exercising of measures such as mass testing, mass contact tracing mandated social distancing or lockdowns”.

• The scenario of an emerging infectious disease reaching pandemic scale and requiring contact tracing as a first step to controlling its spread “was not considered”.

Jackie Baillie has blasted both Scottish and UK Governments (Image: PA)

Ms Baillie, Scottish Labour's health spokesperson and deputy leader, said: "During the pandemic people across Scotland were let down by two ill-prepared governments and the consequences were catastrophic.

“All those in power at this time owe us complete transparency and honesty as this inquiry continues to seek the truth about what went so tragically wrong.

“For all the lives lost, livelihoods destroyed and sacrifices made, the lessons of the Covid pandemic must be learned so that the mistakes are never repeated.”

In her recommendations, Baroness Hallett called for a new pandemic strategy to be developed and tested at least every three years, with a UK-wide crisis response exercise.

She said the government and political leaders should be properly held to account on a regular basis “for systems of preparedness and resilience”.

There were more than 235,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK up to the end of 2023.

The government has vowed to improve the UK’s “national resilience” after the UK Covid-19 Inquiry found there were “significant flaws” in preparing for a pandemic.

Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden told MPs he would lead a review of the country’s “national resilience against the range of risks that the UK faces”.

He said: "We can only begin to imagine the anguish and the anger that people feel, because this report confirms what many have always believed: that the country was not as prepared as it should have been. That more could and should have been done.”

He added: “The underlying picture this report sets out is stark. Before the pandemic began our public services were already stretched to their limit during what should have been normal times. This was especially true of the NHS.

“Overstretched even before the pandemic hit, key workers in other services, overburdened in normal times, were then asked to go above and beyond."

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For the Conservatives, shadow justice secretary Edward Argar said the Government and others must learn from their mistakes during the Covid-19 pandemic, “however painful those lessons may be”.

He said: “What we have seen set out today by (Mr McFadden) and by Lady Hallett yesterday is deeply sobering.

“It lays bare failures of state in respect of planning, in respect of challenge, in respect of resourcing and in respect of leadership, and irrespective of government or party in power, it is incumbent on all of us to look at that in the spirit in which Lady Hallett has put forward her recommendations.”

John Swinney was the Deputy First Minister of Scotland during the pandemic and is now in the top job at Holyrood.

He promised that the Scottish Government will consider the recommendations made by Baroness Hallett.

He said: “The Scottish Government will carefully consider the recommendations made by Baroness Hallett in the UK Covid-19 Inquiry report and provide detailed responses to the recommendations within the timescales that have been set out.

“Families across the country lost loved ones to the Covid-19 pandemic, and we offer our deepest sympathies to all those who have experienced pain and grief as a result.

“It is with their loss in mind that we continue our efforts to make effective, practical and measurable improvements in pandemic planning and preparedness.

“The implementation of recommendations will require collaborative action with our counterparts across the four nations, and the Scottish Government is committed to working together, at all levels, in a way which allows us to best prevent, prepare for and respond to future civil emergencies.”