Summary of what we learnt from Module 1 of the UK Covid Inquiry, and our recommendations to the Government

Module 1 of the Inquiry, which investigated the UK’s pandemic preparedness and resilience, drew to a close earlier this week. The past few weeks of hearings saw appearances from expert witnesses in the fields of science and public health, as well as key figures in local government and political figures such as Matt Hancock (former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care), Michelle O’Neill and Arlene Foster (former Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland and former First Minister of Northern Ireland respectively), Vaughan Gething (former Wales Minister for Health and Social Services) and Nicola Sturgeon (former First Minister of Scotland), to name a few. 

Much of what we heard in the last four weeks of hearings backed up and served as further, more detailed evidence of the damning revelations made in weeks 1 and 2. Time and time again we heard evidence of the crippling impact of austerity measures on our health services and public health systems, the disjointed and dysfunctional systems by which National Risk Assessments are made and communicated throughout different levels of government and between the government’s of each of the UK’s nations, as well as the UK’s categorical failure to plan to mitigate or prevent a catastrophe, rather than just deal with the consequences of a crisis once it had struck. 

It has become clear that a pandemic such as  the Covid 19 pandemic was not only foreseeable, but foreseen by the scientific advisory community. It was also entirely foreseen that the pandemic would disproportionately harm those vulnerable as a result of structural and institutional racism, other forms of structural discrimination and health inequalities. And yet hardly any reference to these inequalities were made in the plans, guidance or exercises designed to prepare us for emergencies. Moreover, the decade leading up to the pandemic saw a deepening of inequalities. Not only was the UK totally unprepared for a non-influenza pandemic, our ability to respond to any civil emergency or public health crisis was actively undermined and worsened by widening inequalities, reduced public service capabilities, as well as a lack of senior governmental leadership when it comes to emergency preparedness, most strikingly in Northern Ireland, where there was no functioning government for multiple periods in the years leading up to the pandemic. 

While it is hugely distressing to contemplate the many ways in which those who lost their lives to Covid 19 were let down by the Government, the revelations of the past six weeks have armed us with clear recommendations to make sure that we learn from the mistakes of the past to prevent deaths in the future. 

The following recommendations have been made by our lawyers to the chair of the Inquiry: 

1. The government must instate a senior cabinet Minister for Emergency Resilience and Planning. They would hold responsibility for ensuring that public services, government departments and frontline responders are prepared for civil emergencies, and that resilience in the face of emergencies is baked into all areas of policy. 

2. A ‘whole system plan’ must be developed to respond to each group of threats and hazards identified in the National Risk Register. 

3. A central government department, such as the Cabinet Office, must legally hold responsibility for coordination of the ‘whole system approach’. As things stand, only first and secondary responders (such as emergency services, local authorities and local health boards, utilities and transport providers) are under a statutory duty to protect lives in a civil emergency. By extending statutory duties in civil contingencies legislation to national bodies and government departments, there would be a greater obligation for national bodies and departments to support preparedness and resilience in first and secondary response organisations. 

4. An independent standing scientific committee on pandemics must be established, with the purpose of advising the Government on resilience and preparedness for pandemics, as well as those responsible for the design and implementation of National Risk Assessments.

5. There must be a duty placed on all who hold responsibilities regarding resilience and planning to raise with the Minister for Emergency Resilience Planning any issues of capacity or resourcing impacting on their ability to respond to emergencies. This duty should also fall upon scientific and medical advisors to the Government. 

6. A ‘people first’ approach must be adopted at all levels of civil emergency planning and response (i.e at a central government and local level). That means transparent public consultation regarding threats and planned responses as well as the integration of community and voluntary groups into systems of planning for and responding to civil emergencies.

7. All civil emergency plans should incorporate clean statements setting out how they will combat the effects of structural and institutional racism, other forms of structural discrimination, the effects of health inequalities, and plans to protect vulnerable people. This will ensure that plans are built with the need to address inequalities and prevent harms to those who are more vulnerable at their heart. 

8. There should be a clear national policy for data gathering and analysis to strengthen civil emergency planning and response. 

9. All civil emergency plans should be made public, unless there are clear national security reasons for keeping them secret. Plans can only be challenged and improved when they are available to experts, academics, and the people they hope to protect. 

In the coming months we will campaign for these recommendations to be implemented by the Government as soon as possible. The Inquiry’s official recommendations are unlikely to be made public until next year, but we can’t afford to wait. Our campaigning will influence the nature of the recommendations the Inquiry produces. Moreover, preparedness is the very step in protecting the public from a pandemic, and we can’t afford to wait until next year for failures in UK preparedness and resilience to be addressed.