(C) OpenDemocracy
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What has the UK’s Covid inquiry found so far? [1]
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Date: 2023-08
The UK’s fate at the hands of the pandemic may have been sealed years before Covid-19 hit British shores.
Hospital infrastructure was poor, meaning even those with enough oxygen couldn’t get it to those who needed it.
The UK was stockpiling just 3% of the daily PPE it needed for a pandemic the size of Covid.
A huge amount of focus and resources were put into preparing for a no-deal exit from the European Union, taking attention away from other potential emergencies.
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And austerity had left critical public services understaffed and underresourced.
These were just some of the claims made during the Covid-19 inquiry’s first module, which ran over a six-week period from June to July this year.
It asked how prepared Britain was for the pandemic, calling on politicians, civil servants and experts to provide evidence to the judge, Heather Hallett – while battling the Cabinet Office’s attempts to withhold crucial evidence.
“Some of the decisions that were made were clearly indefensibly wrong,” Matt Fowler, co-found of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, told openDemocracy. “These are the people that have been in charge of the country and it’s an eye opener into the attitudes that may have taken precedence during the run-up to [Covid]”.
David Cameron, George Osborne, Oliver Dowden, Jeremy Hunt, Matt Hancock and Nicola Sturgeon were just some of the politicians called to give evidence to the inquiry, where emergency planning and funding decisions were scrutinised. Osborne defended austerity measures while Hancock blamed a mentality that focussed on, for example, how manu “bodybags” we had, rather than how we prevent a pandemic.
“In our government system, it’s more important to be seen to be right than it is to actually be right,” said Fowler. “I think that it’s really difficult for politicians to admit when they’ve made a mistake.”
openDemocracy has spoken to experts and bereaved families about the experience of the first module, which you can watch below.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/covid-19-inquiry-module-one-david-cameron-george-osborne-matt-hancock/
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