Hancock and Hunt failed to prepare UK for pandemic, Covid inquiry finds

Health secretaries failed to fix flaws in contingency planning before Covid killed more than 230,000 in UK, report says

The former health secretaries Jeremy Hunt and Matt Hancock have been criticised for their failure to better prepare the UK for the pandemic in a damning first report from the Covid inquiry that calls for a major overhaul in how the government prepares for civil emergencies.

Hunt, who was the health secretary from 2012-18, and Hancock, who took over until 2021, were named by the chair to the inquiry, Heather Hallett, for failing to rectify flaws in contingency planning ahead of the pandemic, which claimed more than 230,000 lives in the UK. 

The government had focused largely on the threat of an influenza outbreak despite the fact that coronaviruses in Asia and the Middle East in the preceding years meant “another coronavirus outbreak at a pandemic scale was foreseeable” and to overlook that was “a fundamental error”. 

“It was not a black swan event,” Lady Hallett said in a 240-page report that concluded: “The processes, planning and policy of the civil contingency structures within the UK government and devolved administrations and civil services failed their citizens.

“Never again can a disease be allowed to lead to so many deaths and so much suffering.”

Among the former senior court of appeal judge’s recommendations were: 

The leader or deputy leader of each of the four nations should chair a cabinet-level committee responsible for civil emergency preparedness.

A UK-wide pandemic response exercise should be run at least every three years and a new UK-wide, whole-system civil emergency strategy be put in place.

External “red teams” should regularly challenge the principles, evidence and advice on emergency plans.

An independent statutory body should be established to advise the UK government and devolved administrations, and consult with voluntary groups and council-based directors of public health on civil emergency preparedness and response.

The findings about the UK’s structures and procedures in place to prepare for and respond to a pandemic are the first from the statutory inquiry into Covid-19 and are based on six weeks of hearings last summer as well as the disclosure of thousands of documents.

The report was published at the inquiry hearing rooms in west London where families who lost loved ones gathered to mark what they described as “a huge milestone”.

Thousands of bereaved families had campaigned for a public inquiry before it was announced by Boris Johnson in May 2021. At least nine more reports are due to be published on a rolling basis in the next two to three years as government, health systems, schools, councils, scientists and economists continue to grapple with the consequences of the deadly pandemic.

Hallett also said preparations for a no-deal Brexit caused work on pandemic preparedness to be paused.

In the years preceding the Covid-19 outbreak, “there had been a slowdown in health improvement, and health inequalities had widened. Public services were running close to, if not beyond capacity.

“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,” she said. “I expect all my recommendations to be acted on … I, and my team, will be monitoring this closely.”

There was implicit criticism of George Osborne, the chancellor from 2010-16, for the Treasury failing to plan for non-economic shocks. Hallett said it could have “identified, in advance … major economic policy options that could be deployed in the event of a pandemic”.

Osborne had told the inquiry “there was no planning done by the UK Treasury or indeed as far as I am aware, any western treasury, for asking the entire population to stay at home for months and months on end”.

Hallett said that had the UK been better prepared some of the human and financial cost may have been avoided.

“Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, there was no ministerial leadership within the UK government and devolved administrations that could consider strategy, direct policy and make decisions across the whole of government to prepare for and build resilience to whole-system civil emergencies,” she said.

Key flaws in preparedness included: 

The UK being prepared for the wrong pandemic: influenza. When Hancock became health secretary in July 2018 his day one briefing said: “Pandemic flu is the government’s highest risk”.

The institutions responsible for emergency planning being “labyrinthine in their complexity”.

The government’s sole pandemic strategy (for flu) being outdated – it was from 2011 – and lacking adaptability.

A failure to appreciate the impact of the pandemic and the response to it on ethnic minority communities, and people in poor health and with other vulnerabilities.

A failure to learn from earlier civil emergency exercises and disease outbreaks.

A “damaging absence of focus” on systems such as test, trace and isolate that could be scaled up.

A lack of adequate leadership in the preceding years, with ministers, untrained in civil contingencies, not being presented with a broad range of scientific opinion. They also failed to sufficiently challenge the advice they got, which in any event was beset by “groupthink”. 

On lockdowns, Hallett highlighted Hancock’s evidence that the standing 2011 flu strategy was not for preventing a pandemic having a disastrous effect, but “a strategy of dealing with the disastrous effect of a pandemic”. The strategy gave no consideration to legally mandated lockdowns as a response and Hallett said they must in future “be considered properly in advance of a novel infectious disease outbreak” alongside ways to “prevent a lockdown”.

She said all health secretaries who adhered to the 2011 strategy, which included Hunt, bore 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.”

Hancock had told the inquiry he was “assured that the UK was one of the best placed countries in the world for responding to a pandemic” and that he viewed the World Health Organization, which ranked the UK as a world leader, as “an authoritative source”.

Hallett said “there were a great number of ministers who could have done more by asking questions about it. Mr Hunt accepted that ‘collectively we didn’t put anything like the time and effort and energy’ into understanding the dangers of pathogens and challenging the consensus. This inquiry agrees.”

Former government ministers who were cross-examined in this first module of the inquiry on the UK’s resilience and preparedness included the prime minister, chancellor and health secretary in the years before the pandemic – David Cameron, Osborne and Hunt respectively – and the health secretary, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Cabinet Office minister who were in charge immediately before and during Covid – Hancock, Michael Gove and Oliver Dowden.

Even before the findings were released the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group was calling for urgent reforms from the new Labour government, including the appointment of a secretary of state for resilience and civil emergencies; a standing scientific committee on pandemics, crisis training for ministers and officials, and the establishment of a “red team” to challenge pandemic preparations.

A spokesperson for the group said: “Plans for a pandemic were fatally inadequate; they were outdated, poorly communicated across the government, disregarded the impact of inequalities and were primarily concerned with pandemic flu. Such pandemic planning as there was did not address inequalities, and nothing was done to mitigate vulnerabilities caused by structural discrimination, institutional racism or health inequalities. Our loved ones, colleagues and communities paid the price for that failure.”

The Covid inquiry is to produce a report on political decision-making, and evidence will be taken this autumn on the impact of the pandemic on the health systems of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Next year witnesses will be asked about vaccines and therapeutics. Investigations are under way on: procurement, the test, trace and isolate system, and the care sector. Future investigations into children and young people, and the economic response have been announced.

Emma Davis