Covid reveals true price of brutal cuts during years of austerity – Tom Wood

Hard choices had to be made during the years following the 2008 financial crash, but did we choose the right priorities, asks Tom Wood.

Has our response to Covid-19 coronavirus been damaged by a reduction in emergency planning? (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, our local councils all had emergency planning departments, well-staffed and equipped to prepare for foreseeable risks be it fire, flood, storm or pandemics.

Plans were drawn up and regularly exercised both on table-top and on the ground. All the relevant disciplines were involved preparing for the day that it was hoped would never come.

And it was not just ‘war games’ – equipment was stockpiled, everything from blankets to body bags – one rural council even had an inflatable mortuary, a kind of huge, macabre bouncy castle.

These plans and exercises proved their worth not least at the Lockerbie air disaster in December 1988, when Pan Am flight 103 was blown up by a terrorist bomb, killing 270 people on board and on the ground.

Emergency services, the military and groups as diverse as the Salvation Army and the Woman’s Rural Institute combined to face the most desperate of circumstances.

Sadly, as with so many of our bread-and-butter services, the last decade of austerity has been brutal, reducing our local emergency planning departments to a shadow of their former selves.

And they are not alone, social care for the elderly and vulnerable has also suffered swingeing cuts.

Water under the bridge some will say, money was tight, hard choices had to be made, no point in looking back.

But that’s not true – yes choices had to be made, but were they the right ones?

Now as we face our new reality following the outbreak of Covid-19 coronavirus, it’s time to question our priorities.

In the handwringing that will follow this disaster, we cannot hide from uncomfortable truths.

And there’s no point in blaming others, we get the decision-makers and the politicians we deserve, that we vote for, or sometimes by default because we don’t vote at all.

But were the priorities of the past decade the ones that we really wanted. Did we really want to prioritise yet another eye-catching transport initiative over common-sense preparation for disaster or looking after our old folk?

I sincerely doubt it so, as we turn a page on a new chapter on how we live, it’s a good time to take stock, to realign and make sure our elected leaders know how we want them to spend our money.

In the near future, there will be a public inquiry into our handling of this coronavirus pandemic – the worst peacetime catastrophe to hit our civilian population for a hundred years.

It will rightly concentrate on the decisions taken and the management of the virus itself, but it should also look further back at the funding decisions, based on our priorities, made over the last difficult decade.

We cannot afford to make the same mistakes again, our priorities must be crystal clear as we face another ten or perhaps 20 years of tight budgets.

In this coming review, let’s also hope we can avoid trying to apportion blame and political posturing – such tendencies are always fruitless.

Instead we must be clear sighted, we must learn and embed the lessons in our planning for the next time.

For there surely will be a next time.

Tom Wood is a writer and former Deputy Chief Constable

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this article on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our advertisers - and consequently the revenue we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you taking out a digital subscription.

Subscribe to scotsman.com and enjoy unlimited access to Scottish news and information online and on our app. With a digital subscription, you can read more than 5 articles, see fewer ads, enjoy faster load times, and get access to exclusive newsletters and content. Visit www.scotsman.com/subscriptions now to sign up.

Our journalism costs money and we rely on advertising, print and digital revenues to help to support them. By supporting us, we are able to support you in providing trusted, fact-checked content for this website.

Joy Yates

Editorial Director