Covid-19 Inquiry

Richard Holden Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement, and I join his tribute to Baroness Hallett for her report.

We all know how challenging the pandemic was. Sadly, far too many lives were lost—I pay tribute to all the victims from across our country and the world. That is why the Conservative Government put in place the inquiry, and former Ministers have been co-operating with its work—I thank the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster for acknowledging that. It is clear from the inquiry’s investigations and findings so far that response times and processes were too slow and disjointed—we recognise that—but it is also clear that there was an incredibly challenging process and no easy answers.

Module 1 examined our country’s pandemic resilience and preparedness, so I will focus on that. The Government’s response has identified a number of overarching implementations from the module recommendations. We are broadly supportive of the Government’s direction. As the inquiry report notes, it is important to strengthen cross-governmental communication and data sharing, and communication and co-ordination between devolved Administrations. I appreciate that the Government recognise that and are taking forward the recommendation to ensure that the Cabinet Office has a clearer and stronger role in crisis and resilience co-ordination.

The Government have clearly signalled their intention to build on the work started under the last Government, who put together the resilience directorate within the Cabinet Office with the goal of ensuring clear accountability and leadership for long-term resilience and crisis planning. I hope that the steps that the Government have set out will successfully build on that. I am also thankful that they are building on the last Government’s work to lay the foundations of the resilience academy, and I look forward to tracking that progress.

It is important to note that the Government intend to strengthen the articulation of requirements for resilience and emergency training qualifications. I am thankful that they are building on the work that we implemented to establish a new national exercising programme, and are planning a full pandemic exercise for this year. Importantly, we need to recognise that the risks that we will face will be dynamic, because we do not know what the future will hold. I hope that the pandemic exercise will involve cross-cutting segments of microbial resistance and technology infrastructure, which will be key challenges that continue to grow in importance.

The Government have also emphasised the holistic work that can be conducted across all types of organisations as a result of the highly transparent risk register that we first published in 2023. I appreciate that they are setting out their intention to build on that, and offer a wider range of scenarios and frameworks to the register in future. However, they do not seem to fully recognise that there is far too much complication in the system, which risks masking fundamental matters of cross-governmental co-ordination with political measures. I recognise in the Government’s response the desire to ensure independent input into the whole-system civil emergency preparedness and resilience and, in doing so, establish a number of expert advisory groups, but I caution them that that must be backed up by real accountability and progress tracking, to ensure that the work conducted by those teams is enacted transparently and for clear reasons. They must not be just talking shops.

The Government have announced a significant number of reviews, consultations and taskforces, but without real accountability and framework clarity, they risk being only a temporary solution to long-term issues. That is a particular concern when it comes to national resilience. Although we support the Government’s direction, I want to raise a couple of questions. On recommendation 3, the Minister mentioned mapping, which is very welcome, but will he expand a little on the combined impacts of different vulnerabilities for certain groups and how they can be overlaid in that mapping process?

On recommendations 4 and 5 on the whole system emergency strategy and, crucially, that data element, is there data to support the strategy? What confidence does he have in that at the moment? Will he use the UK Biobank for that? There are critical issues around academic freedom as we look into very complex issues, and overlapping issues within communities across the country.

On recommendation 6, what response has the Minister had so far from the devolved Governments? He said that they have been very positive, but could he go a little further? In response to recommendation 9, the red groups sounded good, but I was a little worried when he said, “We are establishing eight advisory groups to combat group-think.” That sounds a little like a tautology. I want to ensure that those groups will be properly independent and that the Government are challenged on their plans. On recommendation 7, there was an important point around reporting back the findings of the nationwide investigations. On the publishing and timeliness, the report asked for three-month publications—will the Minister speak to that? The Cabinet Office said that it is scoping and testing solutions to resolve multi-agency reports. Will he speak to that?

Finally—thank you for your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker—we must not lose sight of the fact that there are shifting landscapes, and our response will be a long-term thing. I appreciate the Government’s response today, but they have not yet responded to last year’s House of Lords Statutory Inquiries Committee report on reforming the process by which public inquiries are conducted. That is slightly overdue, so if the right hon. Gentleman could update us on progress on that, I would be most grateful. We must ensure that the tracker is in place so that on issues such as this, the Horizon scandal or the infected blood scandal, we are always in the right place.

[Pat McFadden]

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s response and for his broad support for our response, including on the resilience directorate academy and the full pandemic exercise. Let me turn to his questions.

On mapping, the data is getting better. The Government’s ability to gather and use data has improved over time, and it is important that we do that as well as we can. Data has been described as the new oil, and it is important that the Government, which have access to good data around the country, use that to map vulnerabilities and to make sure that the next crisis does not expose cracks in our society, as was the case the last time around.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about work with the devolved Governments. Around those tables, people are not always of the same political party or outlook, but in my experience in the last six months, the spirit has been good and one of co-operation. It has been underpinned by the common understanding that, on an issue such as public protection, the public do not really care about political differences. They expect all of us, whatever our political stripe, to work together for their safety and the common good. That is what we should do.

Red teaming and challenge are important, but they have to be put into context. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned accountability; I said in my statement that accountability for policy and resource allocation decisions ultimately has to rest with the Government. We are all for challenge and all for independent input into that, but at the end of the day, that is where the accountability lies and that is who has to take the resource allocation decisions. We will publish the findings of the pandemic exercise. I want to see inquiries come to conclusions more quickly so that victims of injustices can get justice more quickly.

The final thing I say in response to the right hon. Gentleman is that he is right to say that the future may not be the same as the past; that is why flexibility has to be built into all this.