Covid Inquiry calls for 'fundamental reform' to civil emergency planning

Inquiry's module 1 report calls for "radical simplification" of processes and structures and a new statutory body
The National Covid Memorial Wall, which commemorates lives lost to the virus. Photo: Imageplotter/Alamy Live News

The chair of the Covid Inquiry has called for “fundamental reform” to the way the government prepares for civil emergencies, after finding citizens were “failed” by the processes, planning and policies that were in place in 2020.

Published today, the inquiry's first report on its first module highlights failings including a failure to treat the emergence of the novel virus as a "whole-system" emergency and preparing for the "wrong" pandemic. It says there were more than 235,000 deaths involving Covid up to the end of 2023, and that "some of that financial and human cost may have been avoided" had there been better processes in place.

Ministers should set up a single, independent statutory body responsible for whole-system preparedness and response, in an effort to avert such failures in future, its chair, Heather Hallett said.

The crisis body should provide strategic advice to government and make recommendations on their planning for, preparedness for and building resilience to civil emergencies.

The new body is one of a series of recommendations Baroness Hallett has put forward in her report on module 1, which covered the UK's resilience and preparedness for the pandemic.

The report notes that while it was “widely believed, in the UK and abroad” that the UK was one of the best-prepared countries in the world to respond to a pandemic, it was in fact “not prepared for dealing with a catastrophic emergency, let alone the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic that actually struck”.

The country “lacked resilience” owing to a slowdown in health improvement, widening of health inequalities and stretched public services, particularly in health and social care, the report said.

Speaking after the report was published, Hallett said: "I have no hesitation in concluding 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 emergency systems. This cannot be allowed to happen again."

The report adds: “Had the UK been better prepared for and more resilient to the pandemic, some of that financial and human cost may have been avoided. Many of the very difficult decisions policymakers had to take would have been made in a very different context."

'Radical simplification' needed

Hallett said the setting up of an independent statutory body was the "most important" of the 10 recommendations in her module 1 report.

The body should consult widely with experts in the voluntary, community and social sector and make recommendations on the capacity and capabilities needed to prepare for and build resilience to whole-system civil emergencies, she said.

As an interim measure, the new body should be established on a non-statutory basis within the nexts 12 months, to enable it to begin working before legislation is passed, the report says.

But while Hallett flagged this as her principal recommendation, the report also calls for a “radical simplification of the civil emergency preparedness and resilience systems” in government and the devolved administrations, which it says are "labyrinthine in their complexity".

The government must streamline the existing bureaucracy and provide “better, simpler” ministerial and official structures and leadership, Hallet said.

The report calls for each government in the UK to set up a cabinet or equivalent-level ministerial committee to oversee whole-system civil emergency preparedness and resilience, to be chaired by the leader or deputy leader of the relevant government. This should include the senior minister responsible for health and social care, it says.

There should also be a single cross-departmental group of senior officials in each government to oversee and implement policy on civil emergency preparedness and resilience, the report says.

The existing “lead government department” model – under which the Department of Health and Social Care was in charge of the Covid response in the early days of the pandemic – is “not appropriate” for whole-system civil emergency preparedness and resilience “and should be abolished”, the report says.

Former Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove told the inquiry last year that "too much was asked of DHSC" early on and that ministers should have "recognised that this was a whole-system crisis at an earlier point".

The report calls for a UK-wide whole-system civil emergency strategy, supported by new mechanisms to collect, analyse, securely share and use reliable data to inform the response to future pandemics, and the commissioning of a wider range of research projects.

It says ministers should adopt a new approach to developing strategy, learning from the past and taking “proper account of existing inequalities and vulnerabilities”. To achieve this, it says the civil emergency strategy should be reassessed at least every three years to ensure that it is up to date and effective.

The strategy should also incorporate lessons learned from civil emergency exercises, says the report, which also calls for a UK-wide pandemic response exercise to take place at least every three years. Pandemic exercises should include testing of any relevant data systems, it says.

The results of this exercise should be made public, the report says. Within three months of each exercise, it says, each government should set out its findings, lessons and recommendations, and follow up with an action plan with specific steps to take in response within six months.

“All exercise reports, action plans, emergency plans and guidance from across the UK should be kept in a single UK-wide online archive, accessible to all involved in emergency preparedness, resilience and response,” it adds.

The government has been criticised for relying on a blueprint for handling an influenza pandemic to shape its early response to Covid – something former chief medical officer Sally Davies said she regretted and meant the government was not as prepared as it should have been to deal with a pandemic.

The report said there had been a "failure to learn sufficiently from past civil emergency exercises and outbreaks of disease" – echoing the findings of a 2021 National Audit Office report.

To test the resilience of emergency planning, the report says the civil service should regularly bring in external "red teams"  "to scrutinise and challenge the principles, evidence, policies and advice" being used. These teams would be comprised of non-governmental experts with a range of relevant expertise, including scientific, economic and social disciplines.

"This would encourage consideration of practical, real-world consequences and the asking and answering of ‘what if’ questions," it says.

Alongside these changes should come a new approach to risk assessment, says the report, which criticises the government’s reliance on “reasonable worst-case scenarios” – such as there being a 2% mortality rate among those infected that the NHS had to plan for. Ex-cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill told the inquiry in November that the government was slow to take decisive action in the early days of the Covid outbreak because it was too focused on the likelihood of a reasonable worst case scenario occurring, and not enough on what was likely to happen.

The UK government and devolved administrations should develop “an approach that assesses a wider range of scenarios representative of the different risks and the range of each kind of risk”, the report says.

This model should also “better reflect the circumstances and characteristics particular to England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the UK as a whole”, it adds.

'I expect all my recommendations to be acted on'

In a statement accompanying the report, Hallett said her recommendations represented "fundamental reform" of the way the government and devolved administrations prepare for emergencies.

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

The prime minister, Keir Starmer, said the 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".

"The safety and security of the country should always be the first priority, and this government is committed to learning the lessons from the inquiry and putting better measures in place to protect and prepare us from the impact of any future pandemic," he said.

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