Covid Inquiry's report is a truly damning indictment of government failure

“The inquiry has no hesitation in concluding that the processes, planning and policy of the civil contingency structures within the UK Government and devolved administrations and civil services failed their citizens.” Make no mistake, the first report of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry is a damning one.

For years, scientists had been warning the world was overdue for a pandemic on a similar scale to the ‘Spanish flu’ outbreak at the end of the First World War. Governments were aware of this and had taken some steps in preparation.

The report noted that in 2019 it was “widely believed, in the UK and abroad, that the UK was not only properly prepared but was one of the best-prepared countries in the world to respond to a pandemic”. However, it concluded that this confidence was misplaced and the country was, in fact, “ill prepared for dealing with a catastrophic emergency, let alone the... pandemic that actually struck”.

In October 2016, a major, three-day government exercise, called Cygnus, was held to assess the country’s readiness to face a pandemic. However, by June 2020, not long after Covid hit, only eight of 22 recommendations made as a result of that exercise had been carried out. One reason for the lack of action was because civil servants were needed elsewhere – to prepare for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit.

The UK Government was not alone in its failings. The Scottish Government was specifically included in the report’s criticisms, saying that it, along with the other governments, had not acted with “sufficient urgency, or at all”.

In contrast, the inquiry deserves considerable credit for publishing its findings so quickly. But then, as it stressed, it is “not a question of ‘if’ another pandemic will strike but ‘when’”, and the next one may be “even more transmissible and lethal”. Preparations for that terrible day, based on the report’s findings and recommendations, must start immediately.

Both the Scottish and UK governments may have tried their best but, in the judgment of the inquiry, they failed – and more than 230,000 people across the UK died. To make the same mistakes again would be unconscionable. Never again.