Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department took prior to the covid-19 outbreak to (a) prepare for and (b) mitigate the effect of a pandemic; and whether his Department is following a pandemic preparedness strategy for the covid-19 outbreak.

Pandemic plans have been developed over a number of years, informed by lessons learned from the H1N1 (2009) pandemic and from the Ebola outbreak of 2013-2016. The Government has been proactive in implementing lessons learned from these incidents as well as from exercises conducted since then. This includes being ready with legislative proposals that could rapidly be tailored to what became the Coronavirus Act 2020, plans to strengthen excess death planning, planning for recruitment and deployment of retired staff and volunteers, and guidance for stakeholders and sectors across Government.

In addition, the Government’s work to prepare for the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union improved the overall resilience of public services, giving the Government a better understanding of supply chains and ensuring the internal mechanisms of Government were better prepared to deal with the impacts of COVID-19.