Confirmation for public unease about government epidemic handling

 In the absence of a full public inquiry into the impact of SARS/CoV-2 on the UK, various committees of parliament have been beavering away at the subject. The Lords have no less than 4 inquiries into aspects of the pandemic under the aegis of their Covid-19 committee, the first of which reported in July but has not yet received a government response. The Commons' joint inquiry by the Health And Social Care and Science And Technology committees, on the "lessons learned to date", has just reported. So far, the Senedd has not conducted an inquiry into the management of the epidemic in Wales, but has conducted surveys of the impact on health and social services and on culture. 

A brief glance at the summary of the Commons inquiry suggests some watering-down in the interests of achieving unanimity. It fails to indict previous governments (including the coalition) for allowing the UK's admirable contact tracing system to wither away or for failing to maintain PPE in England. The maintenance of these would combat any epidemic disease. It also implies that what pandemic planning was in place would have coped with a novel influenza outbreak, which is not what many medical practitioners seem to believe.

However, what remains is damning enough. Relying initially on inadequate advice from scientists who took little account of experience and practice outside Britain, the government failed to lockdown early, failed to re-institute a tracing system at the first sign of trouble and abandoned testing at an early stage. While acknowledging the effectiveness of the vaccine programme, the committee members also point to continuing flaws in the government's management of the pandemic.

The inquiry does not seem to have addressed the failure of Westminster to listen to the representations from national governments. The problems of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are clearly different from those in metropolitan England. Wales has had some success in applying stricter measures where we have had competence and the First Minister has repeatedly asked for more control over international travel, which has clearly been a weak link in managing the epidemic.