Scottish Government 'failed its citizens' on Covid and stuck to 'flawed' strategy, Inquiry report rules

The UK and Scottish governments “failed their citizens” on Covid by planning for the wrong pandemic and “did not act with sufficient urgency, or at all”, the first report from the UK Covid-19 inquiry has found.

John Swinney vowed to “carefully consider” recommendations of the damning report totalling 83,000 words, which sparked fresh accusations of government leaders overseeing “corporate homicide on an industrial scale”.

The report published on Thursday accused the Scottish Government run under former first minister Nicola Sturgeon of going along with a “flawed” strategy from the UK government, and failing to produce its own risk assessment.

The inquiry said it had “no hesitation” in concluding the “processes, planning and policy of the civil contingencies structures within the UK government and devolved administrations and civil services failed their citizens”.

It found the administrations had prepared for the wrong pandemic, relying on a 2011 strategy for Influenza, then failing to deliver a coherent plan.

The report said the UK government and devolved administrations responded with an untested approach, proceeding on the basis the outcome was "inevitable", and focused on managing casualties, rather than mitigating or preventing the emergency.

There was also criticism of Scotland’s lack of risk assessment, relying on a 2018 UK document and then replacing it with Scotland’s figures, rather than doing its own. There was no separate analysis for Scotland that "adequately" took into account specific factors that might particularly affect the Scottish population.

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

Baroness Heather Hallett, the chair of the Inquiry, claimed UK citizens were “failed”.

She said: “I have no hesitation in concluding that the processes, planning and policy of the civil contingency structures across the UK failed the citizens of all four nations. There were serious errors on the part of the state and serious flaws in our civil emergency systems. This cannot be allowed to happen again.”

Mr Swinney, who was previously Scotland’s Covid recovery secretary, said: “The Scottish Government will carefully consider recommendations made by Baroness Hallett and provide detailed responses to recommendations within the timescales set out.

“We offer our deepest sympathies to those who have experienced pain and grief. It is with their loss in mind that we continue efforts to make effective, practical and measurable improvements in pandemic planning.

“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.”

The exhaustive 217-page report suggested mitigating “group-think” by scientists. A major flaw, according to the inquiry, was the lack of “a system that could be scaled up to test, trace and isolate” people.

The report added: “Despite reams of documentation, planning guidance was insufficiently robust and flexible, and policy documentation was outdated, unnecessarily bureaucratic and infected by jargon.”

The report also 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, co-ordination and oversight”. Ministers “failed to challenge sufficiently the advice they did receive from officials and advisers”, there was “groupthink” and they did not receive a broad enough range of scientific opinion and policy options;

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

– 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;

– There was no consideration of whether controls at the UK border would work.

In her recommendations, Lady 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 governments and political leaders should be properly held to account on a regular basis “for systems of preparedness and resilience”.

Lady Hallett also said external experts from outside Whitehall and government should be brought in to challenge and guard against “the known problem of groupthink”.

In her foreword, Lady Hallett said: “It is not a question of ‘if’ another pandemic will strike, but ‘when’.

“The evidence is overwhelmingly to the effect that another pandemic – potentially one that is even more transmissible and lethal – is likely to occur in the near to medium future. Unless the lessons are learned, and fundamental change is implemented, that effort and cost will have been in vain when it comes to the next pandemic.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said in a statement: “The pandemic showed us that the backbone of Britain is made up of those committing their lives to service – key workers like carers, nurses, paramedics, cleaners and teachers. They put themselves in the eye of the storm, and together with people up and down the country, many of them lost their lives or are still living with the impact of the virus.

“Today’s report confirms what many have always believed – that the UK was under-prepared for Covid-19, and that process, planning and policy across all four nations failed UK citizens.”

Scottish Labour health spokeswoman Dame Jackie Baillie described the inquiry’s findings are “damning” and raise “serious shortcomings”.

She said: “During the pandemic, people across Scotland were let down by two ill-prepared governments and the consequences were catastrophic. All those in power owe us complete transparency and honesty as this inquiry continues to seek the truth about what went so tragically wrong.”

Aamer Anwar, lead solicitor on behalf of the Scottish Covid Bereaved group, said: “The UK government and devolved nations failed in their most fundamental duty in protecting the lives of their citizens . What took place was corporate homicide on an industrial scale, yet many of those responsible have never truly faced justice.

“Today my clients, the Scottish Covid Bereaved, welcome the findings and recommendations of the public inquiry, it has been robust and ruthless, but we still have a long way to go in the search for truth and ultimately justice and a legacy for the many thousands whose lives were taken from them.”

The inquiry began hearing evidence 13 months ago and its progress was hailed as “exemplary” by Alan Wightman, whose 88-year-old mother died in a care home in Fife in May 2020.

Dr Wightman said: “I congratulate Baroness Hallett and her team for reaching this substantive milestone of issuing findings and recommendations.”