Scotland ill-prepared for pandemic – Covid survey

Scotland ill-prepared for pandemic – Covid survey

Image source, Getty Images

Legend, The inquiry found that the Scottish government, led by Nicola Sturgeon until 2023, had “failed” in its duties to its citizens.

  • Author, Andrew Picken
  • Role, BBC Scotland News

The Scottish government was not adequately prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic, a public inquiry has found.

The UK Covid inquiry has said the UK and Scottish governments have “failed their citizens” by not doing enough to plan properly for the crisis.

The review found that Scottish ministers in Nicola Sturgeon’s administration had adopted flawed UK government resilience plans without tailoring them to Scotland’s needs.

The inquiry’s chair, Baroness Hallett, called for fundamental reform of public health emergency planning.

More than 235,000 people have died in the UK with Covid listed as one of the causes on their death certificate – including more than 17,000 in Scotland – since the first cases were detected in early 2020.

Legend, The inquiry heard evidence at Dorland House in central London.

The UK Covid Inquiry has published its findings to assess whether the risk of a pandemic was correctly identified and whether the country was prepared to deal with it.

  • Ministers had prepared for a pandemic, but based most of their preparations on influenza.
  • A UK-wide influenza pandemic preparedness strategy has been “simply copied” by the Scottish Government without adaptation to local circumstances.
  • The Scottish Government and other devolved administrations “failed to act with sufficient urgency, if at all” on the findings of a previous planning exercise.
  • The Scottish Government’s departments responsible for emergency planning have undergone several reorganisations, moving them further away from the centre of government and causing some confusion.
  • There was a seven-month period in the year before Covid when Scottish government officials tasked with preparing for a pandemic did not meet after being diverted to deal with Brexit.
  • There was a “lack of adequate leadership, coordination and oversight” in pandemic planning across all UK governments.

Image source, Getty Images

Legend, The chair of the inquiry, Baroness Hallett, made several recommendations

The public spending watchdog found that despite a number of planning exercises in anticipation of the pandemic – in 2015, 2016 and 2018 – not all of the measures identified in these plans were fully implemented.

These measures aimed in particular to ensure access to sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE) and to respond rapidly to social care capacity needs.

Baroness Hallett has made a series of recommendations that would see a major overhaul of emergency planning, including the creation of a new independent body to oversee the changes.

This would effectively relieve departments of much of the planning needed to ensure that preparations across the UK constitute a “systemic response”.

Baroness Hallett also wants a UK-wide pandemic planning exercise to be held every three years.

The inquiry expects the recommendations to be implemented quickly, some within six months to a year.

Impact of Brexit

Ms Sturgeon, who led the Scottish government between 2014 and 2023, told the inquiry in June 2023 that pandemic planning had been hampered by preparations for a no-deal Brexit.

Ms Sturgeon agreed that the UK’s pandemic flu preparedness strategy – developed in 2011 following the swine flu outbreak two years earlier – was inadequate to deal with Covid-19.

She also said her government had clashed with Downing Street during the pandemic over approaches to suppressing the virus.

First Minister John Swinney – who held several cabinet posts before the crisis and was deputy first minister and Covid recovery secretary during it – told the inquiry he had been kept “awake at night” by issues of pandemic preparedness and other potential emergencies.

He said preparations for a no-deal Brexit, along with other factors, had slowed down the implementation of recommendations from previous health emergency exercises.

He also said Brexit had contributed to “pretty poor” working relations between the Scottish and UK governments.

A separate Scottish inquiry is specifically looking at the impact of the virus north of the border.

The inquiry was delayed after its initial chair left for personal reasons and four members of the inquiry’s legal team left.

The hearings were due to begin in October 2023, but were delayed further this year after the replacement chairman, Lord Brailsford, had to undergo surgery on a kidney tumour.