The UK Covid-19 inquiry has published the report of its first module, which explored resilience and preparedness in relation to the recent pandemic.
Module 1 of the UK Covid-19 found that ‘the system of building preparedness for the pandemic – that is, our ability to deal with a pandemic – suffered from several significant flaws’: as a result the inquiry recommends ‘a major overhaul of how the UK Government and devolved administrations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales prepare for whole-system civil emergencies’.
Key failures highlighted in the report include:
- Despite planning for an influenza outbreak, preparedness and resilience was not adequate for the global pandemic that occurred.
- Emergency planning was complicated by the many institutions and structures involved. The approach to risk assessment was flawed, resulting in inadequate planning to manage and prevent risks, and respond to them effectively.
- The UK Government’s outdated pandemic strategy, developed in 2011, was not flexible enough to adapt when faced with the pandemic in 2020.
- Emergency planning failed to put enough consideration into existing health and social inequalities and local authorities and volunteers were not adequately engaged.
- There was a failure to fully learn from past civil emergency exercises and outbreaks of disease.
- There was a lack of attention to the systems that would help test, trace, and isolate. Policy documents were outdated, involved complicated rules and procedures which can cause long delays, were full of jargon and were overly complex.
- Ministers, who are often without specialised training in civil contingencies, did not receive a broad enough range of scientific advice and often failed to challenge the advice they did get.
- Advisers lacked freedom and autonomy to express differing opinions, which led to a lack of diverse perspectives. Their advice was often undermined by ‘groupthink’ – a phenomenon by which people in a group tend to think about the same things in the same way.
If it has been better prepared, the UK could have avoided some of the massive financial, economic and human cost of the Covid-19 pandemic concludes the report.
UK Covid-19 inquiry Module 1 recommendations
A summary of the recommendations is as follows:
- A radical simplification of the civil emergency preparedness and resilience systems. This includes rationalising and streamlining the current bureaucracy and providing better and simpler Ministerial and official structures and leadership.
- A new approach to risk assessment that provides for a better and more comprehensive evaluation of a wider range of actual risks.
- A new UK-wide approach to the development of strategy, which learns lessons from the past and from regular civil emergency exercises and takes proper account of existing inequalities and vulnerabilities.
- Better systems of data collection and sharing in advance of future pandemics, and the commissioning of a wider range of research projects.
- Holding a UK-wide pandemic response exercise at least every three years and publishing the outcome.
- Bringing in external expertise from outside government and the Civil Service to challenge and guard against the known problem of groupthink.
- Publication of regular reports on the system of civil emergency preparedness and resilience.
- The creation of a single, independent statutory body responsible for whole system preparedness and response. It will consult widely, for example with experts in the field of preparedness and resilience, and the voluntary, community and social sector, and provide strategic advice to government and make recommendations.
