COVID Inquiry: What Went Wrong – From Planning for the Wrong Pandemic to a Failure to Make Any Economic Strategy

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The collapse of power-sharing in Northern Ireland caused by the row over Brexit contributed to the failure of the UK Government to prepare for and tackle the Coronavirus pandemic, a damning first report from the COVID Inquiry under Baroness Heather Hallett revealed on Thursday.

The report, which severely criticises leadership from both top civil servants and ministers across Whitehall to prepare for the crisis, highlights the additional failure under Prime Ministers Theresa May and Boris Johnson to deal with the Irish border issue as contributing to a breakdown of communications during the pandemic between the two nations.

“Due to the suspension of the power-sharing arrangements, approximately 46 meetings of the North South Ministerial Council did not take place between 2017 and 2020,” the report states. “The Joint Secretariat and Cross Border Emergency Management Group continued to function during this period, but any areas that required ministerial decisions – for example, in relation to funding – could not be taken.”

A grieving widow protested outside the Covid Inquiry as Boris Johnson gave evidence in December 2023. Photo: Eleventh Hour Photography/Alamy

The report is damning on the failure of the UK Government under three successive Health and Social Care Secretaries – Andrew Lansley, Jeremy Hunt, and Matt Hancock – to have a strategy to handle the Coronavirus pandemic.

The sole strategy set out in 2011 was to handle a severe influenza outbreak. As the report states, this amounted to “no strategy” when COVID-19 struck. There were cosmetic changes to update the strategy, when the Coronavirus arrived, but no consideration of any major changes required.

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Lockdowns were not even contemplated. The strategy concentrated on reducing casualties.

Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland copied the English version of the strategy rather than developing their own.

Worse than this, the Department of Health and Social Care repeatedly said that it had taken account of an earlier severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003 in its planning which, unlike COVID-19, had limited transmission, and assured the Inquiry that it had a plan to cope.

“No UK-wide contingency plan for SARS, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), or any other high consequence infectious disease has been disclosed by the UK Government,” the Inquiry said on Thursday. “The Inquiry is not therefore satisfied that such plans ever existed.”

The National COVID-19 Memorial Wall in London for the bereaved families of the pandemic. Photo: Amer Ghazzal/Alamy

Alongside this failure to plan an adequate strategy, there was a parallel failure – during the period of austerity – to make any economic plans. The Treasury only planned for a financial crisis, rather than a pandemic, as former Chancellor George Osborne told the Inquiry.

“The Treasury was only involved in the civil emergency preparedn