The UK should have a UK-wide whole-system civil emergency strategy, which includes pandemics.
The UK should have a UK-wide pandemic response exercise at least every three years and publish the outcome; the authorities should bring in external expertise from outside government and the civil service to challenge and guard against the known problem of ‘group think’; publish regular reports on the system of civil emergency preparedness and resilience; and above all a single, independent statutory body responsible for whole system preparedness and response.
These are among the findings of a first report by the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, covering the resilience and preparedness of the UK. Baroness Heather Hallett, Inquiry chair, said: “My report recommends fundamental reform of the way in which the UK government and the devolved administrations prepare for whole-system civil 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. 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.”
More detail
While the proposed statutory body would require legislation to make it, the Inquiry recommends that it’s set up on an interim basis within 12 months. As for ‘group think’, the report recommends that ‘red teams should be brought in from outside of government and the civil service’, to scrutinise resilience. The report asks that civil emergency exercise reports, action plans, and emergency plans and guidance from across the UK be kept available in a single, UK-wide online archive.
The report calls for ‘a new approach to risk assessment that moves away from a reliance on single reasonable worst-case scenarios’. It suggests that inside central government, the Cabinet Office lead on preparing for and building resilience to whole-system civil emergencies across UK government departments. The Inquiry looked back at numerous live and other exercises going back to 2003. While simulation exercises did raise recommendations, they didn’t come into effect.
The Inquiry found that the UK did have an emergency response strategy for preparing for and responding to an influenza pandemic, dating from 2011, the report noted it was never in fact properly tested, and was flawed because in fact it was more about managing casualties and fatalities; and when the pandemic struck, the UK government did not adapt it. It ‘was effectively abandoned’ in the words of the report, because (as the Health Secretary in 2020, Matt Hancock, told the Inquiry) it was ‘woefully inadequate’ and (in the words of another witness to the Inquiry) lockdown was ‘an ad hoc public health intervention contrived in real time in the face of a fast-moving public health emergency’. Hence the Inquiry’s call for a new, whole-system civil emergency strategy, which addresses pandemics, to reduce the risk ‘of being in unknown territory during a major crisis’.
On the issue of getting busy senior people to spare time for exercises – a general problem among business continuity and related professionals – the Inquiry acknowledges exercises are ‘difficult and costly to design and run’ and can be distracting and may not cover the actual risk encountered; still, the advantages of ‘major periodic exercises’ outweigh the disadvantages, according to the report. It urges government ministers and their senior officials to ‘take a more active approach’ towards exercising, ‘to ensure that lessons are not simply rolled over to be considered again’.
The report commented on how ‘prioritisation and reprioritisation of limited resources as a cause of inaction’ was a theme among witnesses’ evidence, such as being diverted to contingency planning for a ‘no deal’ exit from the European Union in the late 2010s.
Background
The Inquiry aims to conclude its public hearings in 2026. It’s split into investigations – or ‘Modules’ – to examine parts of the UK’s preparedness for and response to the pandemic and its impact. So far, the Inquiry has opened nine investigations; a first Preliminary hearing for Module 9 (the economic interventions taken by the UK Government and devolved administrations in response to the covid-19 pandemic) will be held on October 23 in London. Hearings for Module 1 were held in London in June and July 2023 when the Inquiry heard from politicians, scientists, experts, civil servants and bereaved. Visit https://covid19.public-inquiry.uk/. Module eight (impact of the pandemic on healthcare systems) will have hearings in September.
Photo by Mark Rowe, social distancing marker outside supermarket.
