Boris Johnson’s lack of leadership blamed for 23,000 Covid deaths ...Middle East

Boris Johnson’s lack of leadership over the seriousness of Covid led to the first lockdown being introduced too late, which contributed to the loss of 23,000 lives, the official inquiry into his handling of the pandemic has concluded.

A scathing report by inquiry chair Baroness Hallett also criticises the Department of Health, led by the current Cabinet Secretary Sir Chris Wormald and the then minister Matt Hancock, for “misleading” Downing Street that the UK was well-prepared for a pandemic.

“Acts and omissions” by Johnson, the leaders of the three devolved administrations, and the UK’s scientific advisers Sir Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, meant that self-isolation and household quarantine “advisory” restrictions announced on 16 March were a week too late. This meant that the eventual lockdown imposed on 23 March had to be in place longer than it needed to be, the report found.

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Whitty – who is still England’s chief medical officer – and Vallance – now a Labour minister – are also criticised in the report for offering “damaging” advice that people would get bored of restrictions, which had no “grounding” in behavioural science.

Hallett concluded that, had the UK government acted sooner in introducing less stringent restrictions earlier in March, the full lockdown could have been shorter or even avoided altogether.

She endorsed a figure based on epidemiological modelling that, if lockdown had been introduced a week earlier, there would have been approximately 23,000 fewer deaths in the UK in those first months of the pandemic.

While the UK’s four leaders were faced with “unenviable choices” with a rapidly spreading virus, Hallett added: “The Inquiry finds that the response of the four governments repeatedly amounted to a case of ‘too little, too late’.

“The failure to appreciate the scale of the threat, or the urgency of response it demanded, meant that – by the time the possibility of a mandatory lockdown was first considered – it was already too late and a lockdown had become unavoidable.

“Had the UK been better prepared, fewer lives would have been lost, the socio-economic costs would have been substantially reduced and some of the decisions politicians had to take would have been far more straightforward.”

The report also condemned a “toxic and chaotic culture” at the heart of Downing Street, involving the then PM’s senior adviser Dominic Cummings, where the “loudest voices prevailed” and which was “actively encouraged” by Johnson. This culture led to poor decision-making, Hallett said.

The report is based on testimonies by Johnson and senior members of his government, scientists and the devolved administrations in autumn 2023.

It is understood that Johnson has no plans to respond to the findings. But the report will also put pressure on Wormald, who is now the most senior member of the Civil Service and Sir Keir Starmer’s right hand man in Cabinet.

Wormald is already under pressure over his current role, with reports that his performance at the heart of Downing Street has been called into question.

How botched lockdown led to more deaths

The inquiry found that the UK government’s “initial strategy was to slow the spread of the virus”. On 13 March 2020, “it became clear the true number of cases was several times higher than previously estimated and that this strategy would risk overwhelming the NHS”.

The UK government introduced advisory restrictions on 16 March, including self-isolation, household quarantine and social distancing.

The report said: “Had they been introduced sooner – when the number of Covid-19 cases was lower – the mandatory lockdown from 23 March might have been shorter or, conceivably, not have been necessary at all.

“At the very least, there would have been time to establish the effect of the restrictions on the number of cases. The failure to act more speedily and effectively increased the likelihood of a mandatory lockdown.”

Full lockdown was the ‘only viable option left’

The report added: “The mandatory lockdown should have been introduced one week earlier. Modelling shows that in England alone there would have been approximately 23,000 fewer deaths between 16 March and the end of November 2020.”

Full lockdown was the “only viable option left”.

However, the inquiry accepted that, overall, the three lockdowns introduced in the UK in March 2020, November 2020 and January 2021 did end up saving lives and the governments acted “rationally”.

The report said: “All four governments had received clear and compelling advice: the exponential growth in transmission would likely lead to loss of life on an unacceptable scale…

“Nevertheless, it was only through their own acts and omissions that the four governments had made such a lockdown inevitable.”

Johnson missed first five emergency Cobra meetings

The inquiry has heard how Johnson missed the first five meetings of the government’s emergency committee Cobra in January and February 2020, with Hancock taking the lead instead. The report said it was “surprising” the PM did not chair those meetings until March.

“While it was not wrong for Mr Hancock to chair initial COBR meetings, the fact that it met so regularly, together with the obviously escalating nature of the crisis, made it surprising that COBR was not chaired by the Prime Minister until early March 2020.

“Mr Johnson should have been advised – and should himself have appreciated earlier – that this was an emergency that required prime ministerial leadership.

“At the latest, he should have chaired COBR on 18 February 2020. The chairmanship and authority of the Prime Minister would have conveyed how serious the matter was and would likely have added greater impetus to the UK government’s response.”

The report pointed out that none of the leaders of the devolved administrations, Nicola Sturgeon, Mark Drakeford and Arlene Foster, attended all Cobra meetings.

The report added: “The highest levels of the UK government failed to respond with sufficient urgency in early and mid-February 2020… there was an element of drift and a failure to take control of the emerging crisis.

“Mr Johnson’s failure to appreciate the nature of the impending crisis was, in part, because of his optimism that it would amount to nothing, his scepticism arising from earlier UK experiences of infectious diseases and, inevitably, his attention being on other government priorities – with Covid-19 not even being in the top five issues crossing his desk in early to mid-February 2020.

“This was most likely exacerbated by the assurances he was receiving that plans were in place.”

However, Johnson had been warned on 28 February by the Cabinet Office’s civil contingencies secretariat that “Covid-19 looks increasingly likely to become a global pandemic, although this is not yet certain.”

‘Flawed’ scientific advice

The report said “the overarching system under which ministers received technical and scientific advice – and acted accordingly in light of all the available information – failed to lead to sufficiently speedy and robust action being taken to respond to the virus. This had extremely serious consequences”.

Until the weekend of 14 and 15 March 2020, Whitty and Vallance advised that restrictions should not be implemented until closer to the peak of infections “in part due to their concerns about the severity of the indirect public health, social and economic impacts that the restrictions would have and, therefore, an understandable desire to limit the time the restrictions would be in place,” the report said.

“However, it was also due in part to a concern that, since high compliance with restrictions during the peak was essential to reduce the strain on the NHS, restrictions should not be implemented too soon in case the public tired of complying with them before this point.”

Whitty introduced this notion of “behavioural fatigue” but insisted this did not influence his advice about delaying restrictions.

He acknowledged to the inquiry that he was “rightly told off by my behavioural science colleagues” for using the terminology “behavioural fatigue”.

But the report said: “However, on a number of occasions prior to mid-March 2020, both advised that restrictions should not yet be implemented for this reason.”

It also noted there was a lack of data on infections and health service capacity, which meant Vallance and Whitty “had not appreciated the likelihood of the NHS being overwhelmed before then”.

The report added: “As a result, the need to implement stringent restrictions as a matter of urgency was underestimated by scientific advisers until 13 March 2020, when the real risk of imminent NHS collapse in England became apparent.”

Whitty and Vallance both acknowledged that restrictions should have been introduced several days earlier.

While the report said it recognised “the difficulties facing the UK government’s scientific and medical advisers [who] were working under extreme pressure and in conditions of evidential uncertainty… they were aware that the absence of adequate data was likely to mislead as to the true extent of infection and the resulting impact on health services.

“Accordingly, they should not have advised decision-makers up to mid-March that restrictions should not yet be implemented.

“At the very least, they should have made clearer to decision-makers the higher level of risk for the NHS that would arise from following that scientific advice, given the data gaps and assumptions on which it was based.

“In particular, Professor Whitty should have made clearer to decision-makers that his advice that public compliance with restrictions might wane if restrictions were implemented too early (the notion of ‘behavioural fatigue’) was based on an assumption he had made – and therefore could prove to be incorrect.

“He should have made it clearer that a decision to wait longer before implementing restrictions based on that assumption would therefore entail running certain risks in relation to NHS capacity.”

Leaders ‘failed to interrogate’ scientists

But the inquiry also said leaders and officials in all four governments “failed adequately to interrogate the potential policy consequences of the scientific advice on which they relied in relation to the timing of the implementation of restrictions prior to the weekend of 14 and 15 March 2020..

“Given the near collapse of health services in northern Italy, it was obvious that there was a high risk of health services in the UK being similarly overwhelmed if they did not act urgently.

“It is wholly understandable that Mr Johnson should have wrestled with such a profound decision.

“Nevertheless, in the face of a virus that is spreading exponentially, failure to take early and decisive public health action is likely to have dire consequences.”

Wormald’s department ‘misled’ No10

While there was a lack of urgency and leadership inside Downing Street, the report concluded that “misleading assurances from the Department of Health and Social Care and the widely held view that the UK was well prepared for a pandemic, contributed to the UK government’s failure to recognise the urgency of the situation”.

Wormald, who is now the Cabinet Secretary, was permanent secretary at the DHSC at the time.

The report said: “As the pandemic unfolded, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock MP, gained a reputation among senior officials and advisers at 10 Downing Street for overpromising and underdelivering.”

Hancock “emphasised to the UK Cabinet ‘time and time again’ that the UK was well equipped to respond to Covid-19”.

The report said that this was “likely in part as a consequence of assurances and reassurance he had received that the UK was well prepared – for example, by virtue of the existence of the UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011, by the World Health Organization or by the UK’s ranking on the 2019 Global Health Security Index”.

The report said that “any confidence that there were detailed and carefully considered procedures in place was misplaced”. Cummings told the inquiry: “[I]n the course of February we realised gradually, as we pushed and probed and asked questions for these plans, that they fundamentally didn’t exist.”

Those departmental plans that did exist had not been shared with the Civil Contingencies Secretariat and the Cabinet Office, and there was “no overarching plan beyond the UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011”.

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The report concluded that: “It is likely that Mr Johnson, acting in accordance with his own optimistic disposition, was content to accept the assurances of others, in particular those of Mr Hancock, that all reasonable precautions were being taken. The Inquiry saw no evidence that Mr Johnson challenged the assurances that he was receiving.”

Downing Street was ‘toxic and chaotic’

The report found “there was a toxic and chaotic culture at the centre of the UK government during the pandemic, with the Inquiry hearing evidence about the destabilising behaviour of a number of individuals – including Dominic Cummings, an adviser to the Prime Minister”.

It added: “By failing to tackle this chaotic culture – and, at times, actively encouraging it – Mr Johnson reinforced a culture in which the loudest voices prevailed and the views of other colleagues, particularly women, often went ignored, to the detriment of good decision-making.”

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