Covid Inquiry can’t become a finger pointing exercise, lessons need to learnt - Paul Andrews

Make no mistake: there can be no excuse for ‘partygate’, but it is possible to sympathise with Mr Johnson’s initial indecision. He faced pressures from multiple sources: from industry and the hospitality trade; the treasury; the health service, the advice of the World Health Organisation (WHO) which initially down-played the spread of the pandemic; and the different factions in his own party, including its loony wing which made Brexit outrank all other policies and priorities.

Faced with these kinds of pressure, should we be surprised if, at the start of the crisis, Boris seemed to be running round Downing Street like a headless chicken not knowing what to do or which way to turn?

Perhaps the cabinet indulged in brain-storming exercises which may have thrown up wild suggestions of ‘herd immunity’ and letting the disease kill the old and infirm, but I cannot believe that this idea could have been given serious consideration when the Conservative party relies on the over 65s for most of its support.

And, as for Matt Hancock, make no mistake: there can be no excuse for sending sick people back to residential homes without proper tests, when bed-blocking could easily have been avoided if the many Nightingale hospitals had been brought into use.

Even so, Matt Hancock does deserve credit. If he had waited for PPE contracts to be prepared and gone through the full lengthy government tendering process, there would have been no PPE for months. So, who can blame him, if he simply picked up the phone and invited his friends to submit offers? He would have known the risks involved, and decided they were worth taking.

I seem to recall Mr Hancock pressed on doggedly with getting a vaccine, at a time when his officials thought a vaccine could never be available in time to do much good. All credit to him.

And what about the officials? Few Government officials welcome challenge or accept responsibility for their own mistakes. Sometimes they use their privileged position to find scapegoats.

So, true to form, they blamed the cabinet for being a “bunch of people never less equipped to run a country”, and Matt Hancock for displaying “nuclear levels” of over-confidence.

Civil servants should know their place. They are not the masters of the nation’s elected government: their job is to give advice and then do as they’re told. Officials are experts and there are more ways than one of skinning a rabbit.

In public inquiries and at court, experts often disagree, and officials should accept that their advice may sometimes conflict with other policy considerations, and cannot always be followed.

They themselves have important questions to answer. For example, did they robustly challenge WHO advice downplaying covid, or did they just passively accept it? Why was there no expedited process for bringing in PPE to a clear specification when required? Was there an expedited process for testing and approving vaccines and medicines at the outset of the pandemic? If not, why not?

How were the Nightingale hospitals going to be staffed and why were they never used? They knew perfectly well of the germ warfare laboratories in some countries, and the prospects of lethal man-made germs getting out of these deadly Pandora boxes either by accident or design. Why then was emergency planning only geared up to deal with an outbreak of flu?

We don’t need more recriminations. What should come from the inquiry is a plan which should be made public and consulted on. Processes should be set up which can be brought into effect the moment another serious pandemic hits us.

Everybody should know what resources are available and how they will be applied and what assistance (if any) will be available. Above all, businesses should have sufficient information to be able to plan the levels of reserves or loans they may need to survive another lockdown.

Paul Andrews is a former Ryedale District Council councillor and Mayor of Malton. He is now an honorary alderman of North Yorkshire Council.