Matt Hancock slams pandemic preparations telling Covid Inquiry officials only cared about ‘buying enough bodybags’ rather than saving lives – as astonishing document reveals virus risk was rated ‘red’ but there were BLANKS for mitigation plans

• The ex-health secretary lashes out at the ‘doctrine’ of Whitehall preparations

Matt Hancock today tore into Britain’s ‘completely wrong’ planning for a potential pandemic prior to the coronavirus crisis.

The former health secretary, giving evidence to the Covid Inquiry, lashed out at the ‘doctrine’ of Whitehall preparations for a possible virus outbreak prior to 2020. 

He claimed officials were focused on planning for the ‘consequences of a disaster’ – such as buying enough bodybags or working out where to bury the dead – rather than stopping the spread of a dangerous disease.

Mr Hancock described problems with issuing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to health workers, a lack of any plan to provide mass-testing, a reliance on foreign vaccine manufacturers and the absence of any stockpiles of antivirals targeting a coronavirus.

During his evidence session, the inquiry was also shown an astonishing document that revealed Whitehall planning for various risks ahead of the Covid pandemic.

It showed the risk of a major infectious disease outbreak as marked in red – but accompanying boxes to detail the mitigation plans in place were left blank.

Matt Hancock today tore into Britain’s ‘completely wrong’ planning for a potential pandemic prior to the coronavirus crisis

The ex-health secretary, pictured arriving to give evidence to the Covid Inquiry this morning, lashed out at the ‘doctrine’ of Whitehall preparations for a virus outbreak prior to 2020

The inquiry was shown an astonishing document that revealed the risk of a major infectious disease outbreak was marked red – but boxes to detail the mitigation plans were left blank

 Members of the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice group hold up pictures of their loved ones as Mr Hancock arrives at the inquiry

Mr Hancock’s evidence to the inquiry this morning focused on the Government’s plans for a potential pandemic prior to the Covid crisis, rather than the actions of ministers during the 2020 coronavirus outbreak itself. 

This is set to be covered in further parts of the inquiry later this year.

Mr Hancock, who took over at the Department of Health in July 2018, told the inquiry he asked for more details on emergency preparedness on his first day as health secretary.

‘One of the areas that I pushed hard on was the lack of UK domestic vaccine manufacturing given the importance of a vaccine to responding to any pandemic,’ he said.

But Mr Hancock revealed planning for a potential pandemic was not one of his three main priorities while health secretary as he focused on rolling out more technology in the NHS, tackling obesity and boosting staff numbers in the health service.

He pointed to assurances he had been given that the UK was ‘one of the best-placed countries in the world for responding to a pandemic’.

‘I was assured the UK was one of the best-placed countries in the world for responding to a pandemic and, indeed, in some areas categorised by the World Health Organisation as the best place in the world,’ Mr Hancock said.

‘You can understand when you’re assured by the leading global authority that the UK is the best prepared in the world, that is quite a significant reassurance – that turned out to be wrong.’

Mr Hancock said he was told there were plans in place for dealing with a potential pandemic in a range of areas.

‘For instance, on stockpiles I was told we have a very significant stockpile of PPE and we did – the problem was it was extremely hard to get it out fast enough when the crisis hit,’ he added.

‘I was told that we were good at developing tests and indeed we were. We developed a test in the first few days after the genetic code of Covid-19 was published.

‘The problem was there was no plan in place to scale testing that we could execute.

‘On antivirals, we had a stockpile of antivirals of a flu but not for a coronavirus.

‘On vaccines, I was concerned that we weren’t in a strong-enough position because we were reliant on manufacturing vaccines overseas.

‘And I thought that in a pandemic scenario, force majeure would mean it would be hard to get hold of vaccine doses if they were physically manufactured overseas no matter what our contracts said.

‘And so I insisted that we pushed on domestic manufacture and sought the funding to deliver on that.’

Mr Hancock lashed out at an ‘absolutely central problem’ with Whitehall planning prior to 2020.

‘The attitude, the doctrine of the UK was to plan for the consequences of a disaster – can we buy enough body bags, where are we going to bury the dead?,’ he told the inquiry.

‘That was completely wrong. Of course it’s important to have that in case you fail to stop a pandemic but central to pandemic planning is how do you stop the disaster from happening in the first place, how do you suppress the virus?’

Previously, the inquiry has heard how ‘groupthink’ saw Britain spend more time on preparing for a flu pandemic rather than a widespread outbreak of another respiratory disease.

But Mr Hancock insisted this was ‘not the main flaw’ in UK preparations.

‘My central point that to say that the main problem with that plan was that it was a flu plan and there was and we ended up with a coronavirus pandemic is, of course, a flaw, but it is not the central flaw,’ he added.

‘If we’d had a flu pandemic, we would have had a massive problem because of the doctrinal failure of how to respond to it as well – that was a much bigger error, it was an error across the western world, but it was a much bigger error and it is absolutely central.’

Earlier, Mr Hancock was quizzed about the Department of Health’s ‘high-level risk register’ for the third quarter of 2019 to 2020. 

It showed a ‘major national infectious disease outbreak and pandemic flu’ as marked in red, which Mr Hancock said demonstrated the ‘significance of the impact of this, should it strike, could be very serious’.

Lead counsel to the inquiry, Hugo Keith KC, asked why parts of the document to detail ‘mitigations’ for managing the risk were left blank.

Mr Hancock replied: ‘No, I don’t know why those boxes are empty but I do know there was significant activity underway both in the Department and Public Health England to make sure we were prepared, as prepared as then thought possible.’

The ex-Cabinet minister later said more should have been done to prepare for a lockdown prior to 2020.

He said: ‘It is central to what we must learn as a country that we’ve got to be ready to hit a pandemic hard: that we’ve got to be able to take action – lockdown action if necessary, that is wider, earlier, more stringent than feels comfortable at the time.

‘And the failure to plan for that was a much bigger flaw in the strategy than the fact that it was targeted at the wrong disease.’

He added: ‘The doctrinal flaw was the biggest by a long way because if we’d had a flu pandemic, we still would have had the problem of no plan in place for lockdown, no prep for how to do one, no work on what, how best to lock down with the least damage.

‘I understand deeply the consequences of lockdown and the negative consequences for many, many people – many of which persist to this day.’

Mr Hancock also described a ‘very significant problem’ in being able to deal with the Covid outbreak when it came to care homes, as responsibility for them rested with local councils.

He said the responsibility ‘formally fell to local authorities and there was work required of local authorities to put in place pandemic preparedness plans’. 

‘When the pandemic struck and I was told that local authorities were required to have pandemic preparedness plans, I asked to see them and my minister for social care, Helen Whately, found that there were only two which she saw and reported to me them to be wholly inadequate,’ he added.

‘One of the central challenges in social care is that whilst I have the title Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the primary responsibility, legal responsibility, contractual responsibility for social care, falls to local councils.

‘In a national crisis this is a very significant problem because, as I put it in my witness statement, I had the title, I was accountable but I didn’t have the levers to act.’

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