Tell us something we didn’t know, Baroness Hallett! Her Inquiry has found the Tories were totally unprepared for Covid.
A first report from the Covid Inquiry has said Boris Johnson’s Conservative government was incapable of handling the pandemic which, as a result, caused far more deaths and economic damage than should have happened.
It is a conclusion that This Writer reached in March 2020, within days of Boris Johnson announcing the first lockdown.
I wrote about it on This Site, here.
As I recall, there was then a backlash by the government against social media sites like Vox Political, involving attempts to restrict our readerships. That is one reason I am currently lobbying the government to examine the way social media platforms restrict what their users read, and to remove these offences to free speech and the economy. After reading what follows, you may wish to join my campaign.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
Almost a quarter of a million people (227,000) died in the UK between March 2020 and May 2023, when the World Health Organisation declared the end of the “global health emergency”.
The Hallett report states that the government had planned for “the wrong pandemic”, because its systems were geared to an outbreak of a new form of influenza – but even this is untrue.
Exercise Cygnus, in 2016, showed that the Tory government was not prepared for an influenza pandemic – in fact it had dismantled the systems that had been in place to cope with such a threat and had divested itself of the equipment it needed to do so.
Cygnus concluded that any new pandemic would cause the health system to collapse due to a lack of resources.
The Hallett report states that neither the May nor Johnson governments put any extra resources into pandemic planning – they didn’t bother with it. The excuse given is that the government diverted its energies into “Operation Yellowhammer” – its contingency plan for a no-deal Brexit.
It seems there were not enough people in the civil service to work on two projects at once. Was this because of the austerity measures that had been imposed by David Cameron, George Osborne and their Liberal Democrat ally Nick Clegg from 2010 onwards? I think so.
The BBC’s live reporting on this is damning. Referring to the report:
It says the UK was reliant on stopping work on one potential emergency to concentrate on another.
But it also heard evidence from politicians that Brexit planning led to a better understanding of supply chains, meaning it could more quickly stockpile medicines in the pandemic.
And those officials said 15,000 extra staff had been recruited because of Operation Yellowhammer, who could then be redeployed when Covid hit.
Fixing the barn door after the horse has bolted?
The minimal preparations – for “the wrong pandemic” – that the Tories had bothered to put in place involved “dealing with the fallout from the disease [influenza] rather than trying to stop it in its tracks”, according to the BBC.
They relied on being able to quickly tweak existing vaccines to work against a new strain of pandemic flu, and to roll out medications, including anti-viral drugs, to those most in need.
Both of those approaches would not work nearly as well against a new form of coronavirus.
It also meant that measures put in place in some other countries, such as strict border controls and contact tracing to eliminate early outbreaks, were not really considered in the UK’s plans.
How utterly imbecilic. Still, that’s the Tories for you!
Presenting her report, Baroness Hallett highlighted the fact that the UK had high pre-existing levels of illness and general levels of ill-health, which made it more vulnerable to the pandemic.
Was this because the Conservatives had spent nearly 10 years running into the ground what had been the top health service in the world when they slithered back into government in 2010? Yes, I think it was.
Bed-blocking was rife and waiting lists had skyrocketed under the Tories, who had introduced increasing amounts of privatisation that took money away from frontline healthcare, and who were hoping that the de-funding of the NHS, with the delays it was causing, would nudge patients into seeking private treatment instead. They would then be able to say the public service model does not work and it would give them an entirely false reason for privatising the lot.
There can be no doubt that this hugely magnified the scale of the disaster when it hit.
Baroness Hallett said the UK government’s sole pandemic strategy from 2011 “was outdated and lacked adaptability”, adding that “it was never properly tested and the doctrine that underpinned [it] was ultimately abandoned”.
Compare that with what I wrote in March 2020: “The government has devised strategies to deal with such a threat. The problem is, they are all out of date.”
Baroness Hallett went on to outline recommendations for reform, which the BBC describes as follows:
- Radically simplifying the civil emergency preparedness and resilience systems, including rationalising and streamlining bureaucracy
- A new approach to risk assessment, providing a better and more comprehensive evaluation of a wider range of actual risks
- A new UK-wide approach to developing strategy, which learns lessons from the past and from regular civil emergency exercises, taking proper account of existing vulnerabilities and inequalities
- Better 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 services to challenge orthodoxy and guard against “the acute problem of groupthink”
- Creating a single, independent, statutory body responsible for whole-system preparedness and response, consulting widely with experts and the voluntary, community and social sector and providing strategic advice to government.
Does anybody think any of this is going to happen?
There aren’t enough resources in the government because the civil service has been cut to the bone. If it couldn’t handle two contingency plans in 2019, it certainly can’t do so now!
The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group has criticised the report, saying it is “extremely disappointing” that the there are no proposals for dealing with racial inequality, health inequalities or the effects of austerity.
Naomi Fulop, a professor who lost her mother to the virus, told the BBC: “Even the best laid plans won’t save lives unless they address, rather than just account for, the conditions that led to our inability to respond quickly, equitably and effectively.”
So the upshot of all the above is as follows:
The first report of Baroness Hallett’s Covid Inquiry has told us nothing more than what we knew within seven days of the first lockdown being imposed in March 2020 – and its recommendations do not go far enough to address the faults in UK society that made the pandemic such a disaster.
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Inquiry has found the Tories were totally unprepared for Covid. We knew that!
Tell us something we didn’t know, Baroness Hallett! Her Inquiry has found the Tories were totally unprepared for Covid.
A first report from the Covid Inquiry has said Boris Johnson’s Conservative government was incapable of handling the pandemic which, as a result, caused far more deaths and economic damage than should have happened.
It is a conclusion that This Writer reached in March 2020, within days of Boris Johnson announcing the first lockdown.
I wrote about it on This Site, here.
As I recall, there was then a backlash by the government against social media sites like Vox Political, involving attempts to restrict our readerships. That is one reason I am currently lobbying the government to examine the way social media platforms restrict what their users read, and to remove these offences to free speech and the economy. After reading what follows, you may wish to join my campaign.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
Almost a quarter of a million people (227,000) died in the UK between March 2020 and May 2023, when the World Health Organisation declared the end of the “global health emergency”.
The Hallett report states that the government had planned for “the wrong pandemic”, because its systems were geared to an outbreak of a new form of influenza – but even this is untrue.
Exercise Cygnus, in 2016, showed that the Tory government was not prepared for an influenza pandemic – in fact it had dismantled the systems that had been in place to cope with such a threat and had divested itself of the equipment it needed to do so.
Cygnus concluded that any new pandemic would cause the health system to collapse due to a lack of resources.
The Hallett report states that neither the May nor Johnson governments put any extra resources into pandemic planning – they didn’t bother with it. The excuse given is that the government diverted its energies into “Operation Yellowhammer” – its contingency plan for a no-deal Brexit.
It seems there were not enough people in the civil service to work on two projects at once. Was this because of the austerity measures that had been imposed by David Cameron, George Osborne and their Liberal Democrat ally Nick Clegg from 2010 onwards? I think so.
The BBC’s live reporting on this is damning. Referring to the report:
Fixing the barn door after the horse has bolted?
The minimal preparations – for “the wrong pandemic” – that the Tories had bothered to put in place involved “dealing with the fallout from the disease [influenza] rather than trying to stop it in its tracks”, according to the BBC.
How utterly imbecilic. Still, that’s the Tories for you!
Presenting her report, Baroness Hallett highlighted the fact that the UK had high pre-existing levels of illness and general levels of ill-health, which made it more vulnerable to the pandemic.
Was this because the Conservatives had spent nearly 10 years running into the ground what had been the top health service in the world when they slithered back into government in 2010? Yes, I think it was.
Bed-blocking was rife and waiting lists had skyrocketed under the Tories, who had introduced increasing amounts of privatisation that took money away from frontline healthcare, and who were hoping that the de-funding of the NHS, with the delays it was causing, would nudge patients into seeking private treatment instead. They would then be able to say the public service model does not work and it would give them an entirely false reason for privatising the lot.
There can be no doubt that this hugely magnified the scale of the disaster when it hit.
Baroness Hallett said the UK government’s sole pandemic strategy from 2011 “was outdated and lacked adaptability”, adding that “it was never properly tested and the doctrine that underpinned [it] was ultimately abandoned”.
Compare that with what I wrote in March 2020: “The government has devised strategies to deal with such a threat. The problem is, they are all out of date.”
Baroness Hallett went on to outline recommendations for reform, which the BBC describes as follows:
Does anybody think any of this is going to happen?
There aren’t enough resources in the government because the civil service has been cut to the bone. If it couldn’t handle two contingency plans in 2019, it certainly can’t do so now!
The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group has criticised the report, saying it is “extremely disappointing” that the there are no proposals for dealing with racial inequality, health inequalities or the effects of austerity.
Naomi Fulop, a professor who lost her mother to the virus, told the BBC: “Even the best laid plans won’t save lives unless they address, rather than just account for, the conditions that led to our inability to respond quickly, equitably and effectively.”
So the upshot of all the above is as follows:
The first report of Baroness Hallett’s Covid Inquiry has told us nothing more than what we knew within seven days of the first lockdown being imposed in March 2020 – and its recommendations do not go far enough to address the faults in UK society that made the pandemic such a disaster.
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
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