This scathing report goes a long way to answer the UK COVID-19 Inquiry’s critics, who have consistently attacked it as a costly waste of time.
They tried to undermine inquiry chair Lady Hallet’s attempt to understand what went wrong and how we might do better, and portray it as a lame exercise that would achieve very little.
Well, we now know that Boris Johnson’s “toxic and chaotic” government could well have prevented at least 23,000 deaths had they acted sooner and with greater urgency.
Follow latest: All four UK governments ‘failed to appreciate’ scale of COVID pandemic threat
File Pic: PA
The response was “too little, too late”. And nobody in power truly understood the scale of the emerging threat or the urgency of the response it required.
The grieving families who lost loved ones in the pandemic want answers. They want names. And they want accountability.
But that is beyond the remit of this inquiry.
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‘Toxic and chaotic culture’ at centre of UK government during the pandemic
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The publication of the report into Module 2 of the inquiry will bring them no comfort, it may even cause them more distress.
But it will bring them closer to understanding why the UK’s response to this unprecedented health crisis was so poor.
Copies of the UK COVID-19 Inquiry’s findings into decisions made by former prime minister Boris Johnson and his advisers. Pic: PA
We can easily identify the “advisers and ministers whose alleged rule breaking caused huge distress and undermined public confidence”.
And we know who was in charge of the Department of Health and Social Care as it misled the public by giving the impression that the UK was well prepared for the pandemic when it clearly was not.
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