Covid inquiry publishes first damning report as 10 changes demanded from ministers

The report concludes: "The UK prepared for the wrong pandemic."

It found: "The significant risk of an influenza pandemic had long been considered, written about and planned for.

"However, that preparedness was inadequate for the global pandemic of the kind that struck."

Baroness Hallett said she also found that the "institutions and structures responsible for emergency planning were labyrinthine in their complexity.

"There were fatal strategic flaws underpinning the assessment of the risks faced by the UK."

In a further eviscerating assessment of the effectiveness of the those health emergency plans, the Inquiry Chair found: "The UK Government's sole pandemic strategy, from 2011, was outdated and lacked adaptability.

"It was virtually abandoned on its first encounter with the pandemic."

It said the strategy "focussed on only one type of pandemic, failed adequately to consider prevention or proportionality of response, and paid insufficient attention to the economic and social consequences of pandemic response."

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The Covid-19 Inquiry's first report states that the government's health emergency plans also failed to learn sufficiently from past civil emergencies exercises and outbreaks of diseases.

The plans also suffered from a "damaging absence of focus on the measures required.. in particular, a system that could be scaled up to test, trace and isolate in the event of a pandemic."

The conclusions state: "The Inquiry has no hesitation in concluding that the processes, planning and policy of the civil contingency structures within the UK government and the devolved administrations and civil services failed their citizens."

Baroness Hallett said that if the UK had been better prepared, the nation could have avoided some of the significant and long-lasting financial, economic and human costs of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Her Inquiry report makes 10 recommendations to the government, including:

• A radical simplification of the civil emergency preparedness and resilience systems.
• Better systems of data collection and sharing in advance of future pandemics.
• Holding a UK-wide pandemic response exercise every three years at least.
• The creation of a single, independent statutory body responsible for preparedness and response.

After the publication of her report, Baroness Hallet said: "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.

"I expect all my recommendations to be acted on, with a timetable to be agreed with the respective administrations. I, and my team, will be monitoring this closely."

The publication of the first report has been welcomed by the families of some of those who lost loved ones in the pandemic.

Dr Alan Wightman from North Yorkshire, lost his mother to the outbreak in May 2020, after she contracted the virus in her care home in Fife.

"My mum was an 88-year-old widow, a dementia sufferer and a cancer survivor. She had been settled and looked after in her well-run home for 11 months before Covid got in, despite the best efforts of the staff.

"I congratulate Baroness Hallett and her team for reaching this substantive milestone."

During the evidence sessions for the first report, 69 experts and politicians, including former Prime Minister David Cameron and Health Secretaries Jeremy Hunt and Matt Hancock, gave evidence.

The Inquiry chair has confirmed she expects all of the Covid Inquiry hearings to conclude by the Summer of 2026.
Another nine reports will follow today's conclusions.

The next report will focus on the critical decision-making and political governance throughout the time of the pandemic.