Covid report: governments acted ‘too little, too late’

Back to the Covid inquiry, where chair Baroness Heather Hallett, has presented the findings of its report. The conclusions don’t particularly paint anyone in a good light and the report even claims that acting ‘too little , too late’ cost the country as many as 23,000 lives in England – although this figure is already being disputed given that, um, ‘modelling’ doesn’t establish anything. The report also suggests that lockdown could have been avoided altogether had social distancing and isolation been introduced earlier. Good heavens…

Former prime minister Boris Johnson has been dragged back into the limelight too, after the report claimed that BoJo failed to tackle a ‘toxic and chaotic culture’ in No. 10 – and, it notes, even ‘actively [encouraged] it’. But Johnson won’t be the only person with burning ears this afternoon. The SNP’s former Dear Leader Nicola Sturgeon has, alongside her then-deputy and current First Minister John Swinney, been criticised for cutting out her cabinet while she made key pandemic decisions like shutting schools. Sturgeon was also slammed for her WhatsApp use, with Baroness Hallett noting the use of private channels for communication could ‘impede’ the courts and official investigations. Mr S would remind readers that the former FM faced backlash last year after it emerged that she had wiped her messages and had, er, ‘retained no messages whatsoever’ from the pandemic. How convenient…

More broadly, all four governments of the UK were blasted in today’s report – with Baroness Hallett stating that across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, governments ‘failed to appreciate’ the scale of the threat from the virus and the need to respond quickly. Indeed Sturgeon and Johnson were dressed down for their ‘poor’ relationship during the pandemic, with the review concluding that tensions between the pair were not ‘in the interests of the people of the UK’. And while Baroness Hallett admitted that ‘unenviable’ choices had to be made by the governments of the UK during the pandemic, she also insisted a lack of urgency saw avoidable lockdowns being forced on Brits. Talk about a tough read, eh?