Covid victims were 'failed' by lack of 'sufficient urgency' from Sturgeon and Johnson governments, says damning inquiry report

Victims of coronavirus were ‘failed’ by the Scottish and UK Governments because they did not properly prepare for the pandemic, a damning public inquiry has concluded.

The first report of the UK Covid-19 inquiry condemned Nicola Sturgeon and Boris Johnson’s governments for ‘significant flaws’ in preparing for a series of devastating waves of the disease.

Baroness Heather Hallett, who led the inquiry, found a ‘damaging absence of focus’ on measures needed to deal with a fast-spreading disease, which was to blame for ‘the tragedy of each individual death’.

More than 235,000 UK deaths were linked with Covid, including 17,000 in Scotland.

Baroness Hallett said ‘radical reform’ is needed so that ‘never again can a disease be allowed to lead to so many deaths and so much suffering’. First Minister John Swinney was repeatedly mentioned in her report, as he was the minister in Ms Sturgeon’s Cabinet who held responsibility for resilience at the time.

The report, which specifically looked at the resilience and preparedness of the UK, concluded the UK and devolved governments had ‘failed their citizens’.

Scottish Conservative chairman Craig Hoy said: ‘This report makes for sobering reading for senior politicians across the United Kingdom and my thoughts are with bereaved families.

‘From a Scottish perspective, John Swinney has serious questions to answer about his role and why a host of key recommendations to ensure we were prepared for such an event were not delivered by the SNP Government.’

Scottish Labour health spokesman Jackie Baillie said: ‘During the pandemic people across Scotland were let down by two ill-prepared governments and the consequences were catastrophic.

‘The SNP must respond to these damning findings and set out how it will address the serious shortcomings raised.

The headline findings and recommendations of the report apply to the UK Government and the devolved administrations.

This included the finding that there were ‘serious errors on the part of the state and serious flaws in our civil emergency systems’.

It highlighted that Mr Swinney held ‘ministerial responsibility for resilience’ throughout his tenure as Deputy First Minister, from November 2014 until March 2023.

It also said Mr Swinney himself referred to his role as ‘leading the resilience function of the Scottish Government’.

He commissioned a Scottish Risk Assessment in 2015, which was eventually published in 2018 and largely replicated a UK document with ‘no separate analysis for Scotland that adequately took into account specific factors that might particularly affect the population of Scotland’.

The report found the devolved administrations ‘simply copied’ the methods of the UK Government on risk assessments and this ‘did not assess how particular risks would affect the population of the individual nations and failed to take into account sufficiently, or at all, the underlying health, social and economic circumstances of each population’.

During her appearance at the inquiry, Ms Sturgeon confirmed that the Scottish Government stood down planning for a pandemic in order to instead step up preparations for a no deal Brexit.

The report highlighted that Gillian Russell, Scottish Government director of safer communities, had told the inquiry that some work was paused because ‘priority was given to other things’.

It said that, by the time the pandemic struck, eight out of 22 recommendations from Exercise Cygnus, a cross-government exercise which took place in 2016, were incomplete in Scotland, including refreshing a previous strategy, fit-testing of PPE, expanding of social care capacity, and updating pandemic guidance.

The inquiry report said: ‘A system that was geared towards acting upon its findings would have done something about this.

‘However, the governments of the UK, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland did not act with sufficient urgency, or at all. As the specific example of Exercise Cygnus underlines, lessons that could and should have been learned were not learned.

‘They were left to be discovered afresh in the next exercise or, as it transpired, when the Covid-19 pandemic struck.’

It concluded: ‘The Inquiry has no hesitation in concluding that the processes, planning and policy of the civil contingency structures within the UK government and devolved administrations and civil services failed their citizens.’

Baroness Hallett added: ‘There must be radical reform. Never again can a disease be allowed to lead to so many deaths and so much suffering.’

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said SNP ministers, including Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney, had been consistently warned that a pandemic was the ‘single biggest threat to Scotland’.

He added: ‘Despite that, the Scottish Government they led was completely unprepared and distracted.’

Following publication of the report, Mr Swinney said: ‘The Scottish Government will carefully consider the recommendations made by Baroness Hallett in the UK Covid-19 Inquiry report and provide detailed responses to the recommendations within the timescales that have been set out.

‘Families across the country lost loved ones to the Covid-19 pandemic, and we offer our deepest sympathies to all those who have experienced pain and grief as a result.

‘It is with their loss in mind that we continue our efforts to make effective, practical and measurable improvements in pandemic planning and preparedness.

‘The implementation of recommendations will require collaborative action with our counterparts across the four nations, and the Scottish Government is committed to working together, at all levels, in a way which allows us to best prevent, prepare for and respond to future civil emergencies.’

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