Covid-19 Inquiry

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I echo the comments in the Statement and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, and extend our sympathies from these Benches to all those who lost loved ones in the Covid pandemic, those who are still losing loved ones to Covid—even though the numbers are much reduced—and those who are still living with the consequences, either with long Covid or with Covid having changed their health in other ways.

I also thank and remember everyone who stepped up to do extraordinary things during the pandemic, including the NHS, social care, our local government and directors of public health leading our local resilience forums. We must also not forget those who kept important infrastructure work going—railways and bus services, supermarkets, farmers and all those who helped to bring in the homeless in those early days of lockdown. The speed of response and care shown were inspirational. From these Benches we also thank everyone who took on volunteer roles. They show the strength of our British civil society, especially in a serious crisis.

The Covid inquiry report on preparedness makes it plain that the last Government did not get it right, but I suspect that had it happened after the election, the same would have happened. This is not just about politicians. It is also about how our Civil Service and others had always pushed it as a non-urgent item, meaning that funding and reviews did not happen. That is probably one of the reasons why it took the UK much longer to get ready when the pandemic came to our shores. I always try to contrast the work of Taiwan. Resilience is there every single day, not for pandemics but for an invasion by China. Taiwan’s relationship with people, with civil society and with different government departments is entirely different from ours. As a result, it was able to move much more swiftly.

So my first question to the Minister is: as pandemic preparedness is not just about those who have direct responsibilities and roles, what are the Government doing to change the cultural way that our society thinks? For example, some people say that masks are absolutely unnecessary and fight having to wear them, when we know that there is a large spread of infectious diseases going on at the moment, particularly in hospital.

I was interested in the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, that the report’s proposal for an arm’s-length body is wrong. I believe that she is wrong, because setting up lots of small units is not helpful. Part of my Front-Bench brief is to follow all the current inquiry and compensation schemes, and common to all of them is a Civil Service attitude that retains departmental priority rather than looking at the crisis. I am not trying to traduce civil servants, many of whom do step up, but there is a culture, as noble Lords know, that, as you have to work to your annual budget, you work to the priorities that you are set, and I am afraid that it is clear from the Covid inquiry report that the pandemic did not feature on the radar.

I think a UK resilience academy is a good idea, but its funding must be protected. Attendance on courses must be compulsory for certain key individuals, and it is important that this covers other emergencies, too: flooding, bombings and any other major unexpected event must have people who will run towards the crisis while everyone else is told to move away.

However, funding for the academy is not enough. We must have ring-fenced and guaranteed funding for local resilience forums. I did not start, and I should have done, by declaring my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. It is appalling that local government’s public health role funding was not just decreased but often announced late over the last 10 years, meaning that there was little capacity for LRFs to focus on anything other than the most urgent demands, so they could not plan ahead for other events.

The previous Government often talked about reducing waste in public services and cutting pandemic planning. Worse, they did not even learn from the events that did happen. The inquiry report says that that must not happen again and these Benches agree. While it is good that there will be a full national pandemic exercise this year, I ask the Minister how often these will be held in the future.

I will very briefly mention vulnerable groups, which are referred to in the Statement. We seem to have moved back to a world where vulnerable groups are people who may be elderly or disabled, but we forget the clinically vulnerable, who are still with us. Particularly on health issues, will the Government make sure that, whenever vulnerable groups are discussed, clinically vulnerable people will be checked as well? There are recommendations in today’s second inquiry report, which has been published, to increase the base of vaccination to ensure that many more clinically vulnerable people are regularly given access to vaccinations.

The new national risk register is impressive, and pages 7 and 8 demonstrate how much the new Government—I give the previous Government some credit for starting work on this—have taken on board from the Covid inquiry report and other reports on key emergencies in recent times.

I end with a warning. In the excellent social and medical history of the Spanish flu pandemic, author Laura Spinney had a number of chapters at the end on life across the world post the pandemic. Virtually all the lessons that they said they would learn in the immediate aftermath of that pandemic were forgotten, including preparing for future emergencies—so much so that, in the mid-1930s, when large numbers of young people were dying of strokes and heart attacks, nobody could work out why. These days, we would understand why.

The Covid inquiry’s clear recommendation to centre all preparedness in the Cabinet Office is rejected by the Government. I wonder whether the Government will review that. I recognise that they are talking about devolving, but the Cabinet Office must hold control of everything.

Finally, by all means have some departmental staff with expertise involved, but we need a neutral body that can see the whole emergency and is able to challenge the preconception better. For example, local resilience forums, and in particular the directors of public health, were ignored by NHS England and the Department of Health for far too long. Will the Government undertake to look at this issue?