Connect with us

Published

on

The government was not “fully prepared” for the “wide-ranging impacts” of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report, which found that Brexit both helped and hindered preparations for future crises.

There was a lack of detailed plans for shielding, job support schemes and school disruption, the National Audit Office found.

According to the watchdog, lessons from previous “simulation exercises” that would have helped when COVID-19 hit were “not fully implemented”.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player


May: PM establishes COVID inquiry

“This pandemic has exposed the UK’s vulnerability to whole-system emergencies, where the emergency is so broad that it engages all levels of government and society,” said Gareth Davies, head of the NAO.

“Although the government had plans for a flu pandemic, it was not prepared for a pandemic like COVID-19 and did not learn important lessons from the simulation exercises it carried out.”

A government spokesperson defended its handling of COVID, stressing the “unprecedented” nature of the pandemic.

“We have always said there are lessons to be learnt from the pandemic and have committed to a full public inquiry in spring,” they said.

More on Brexit

“We prepare for a range of scenarios and while there were extensive arrangements in place, this is an unprecedented pandemic that has challenged health systems around the world.

“Thanks to our collective national effort and our preparations for flu, we have saved lives, vaccinated tens of millions of people and prevented the NHS from being overwhelmed.”

The NAO said that resources dedicated to preparing for Britain’s exit from the European Union had both a positive and negative impact on planning for future crises.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player


March 2020: Life under lockdown

In some instances, work on Brexit enhanced the “crisis capabilities” of certain government departments.

But on the flipside, the strain on resources meant the government had to pause or postpone some planning work for a potential flu pandemic.

“Some work areas of the Pandemic Flu Readiness Board and the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Programme Board, including scheduling a pandemic influenza exercise in 2019-20, were paused or postponed to free up resources for EU exit work,” the report said.

Of the Cabinet Office’s 94 full-time equivalent staff in its emergency planning unit, 56 were allocated to prepare for potential disruption caused by a no-deal Brexit.

The NAO said this had the result of “limiting its ability” to plan for other crises.

“This raises a challenge for the government as to whether it has the capacity to deal with multiple emergencies or shocks,” its report said.

According to the NAO, the pandemic has “exposed a vulnerability to whole-system emergencies”.

And while ministers had plans to try and handle a pandemic, many of them were “not adequate” for the challenges that COVID posed, it said.

The report cited the findings of Exercise Winter Willow, a large-scale pandemic simulation exercise from 2007.

This found that business continuity plans needed to be “better coordinated” between organisations, but the NAO said this was “not evidence in most of the plans it reviewed.

In the wake of another pandemic simulation, Exercise Cygnus in 2016, the government noted that “consideration should be given to the ability of staff to work from home, particularly when staff needed access to secure computer systems”.

But the NAO said that when coronavirus reached the UK, “many departmental business continuity plans did not include arrangements for extensive home working”.

The watchdog found that the government prioritised preparations for “two specific viral risks” – an influenza pandemic and an emergency high-consequence infectious disease.

As a result, there was no plan specific to a disease with the characteristics of COVID, with it being found that scientists considered such a disease “less likely” to occur.

While the report noted that the government was able to use some of the mitigations it had in place when the pandemic struck, such as the stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE), it was “not fully prepared” for the “wide-ranging impacts” the virus would have on society, the economy, and key public services.

The NAO queried why this was the case, given that the government’s 2019 National Security Risk Assessment said that a flu-like pandemic could have “extensive non-health impacts, including on communications, education, energy supplies, finance, food supplies and transport services”.

In addition, the watchdog said that there was no agreement in government of “what level of risk it was willing to accept for an event like COVID-19”.

According to the NAO, it was told by the Cabinet Office that the government’s “risk appetite changed” and it “lowered the threshold for the health and societal impacts of the pandemic that it deemed acceptable” as COVID hit.

In conclusion, the NAO found that the pandemic had flagged up the need to beef up the government’s risk management process and “national resilience” to be ready for future crises of a similar nature.

It made a number of recommendations to the Cabinet Office on risk management and preparedness.

The watchdog did note that the government had already begun considering how to address the issues raised in its report, for instance through its National Resilience Strategy.

Follow the Daily podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker

Lobby Akinnola, a spokesperson for the COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaign group, said the report “confirms what the whole country has long known, that the government was unprepared for the pandemic and that our loved ones might be here today if they had been”.

“What’s most important now is that the government is able to learn lessons from the inquiry to ensure that we are never in this position again.”

Labour’s shadow cabinet office minister Fleur Anderson said the report shows that ministers “failed to prepare and they failed the public”.

“It is vital that preparedness and planning is addressed in the public inquiry into the Conservatives’ mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said.

Sir Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: “This is a damning report that reveals a comprehensive failure from the government to prepare adequately for the pandemic.”

Continue Reading

UK

Zhenhao Zou: More than 20 new potential victims come forward after ‘prolific’ rapist jailed for assaulting 10 women

Published

on

By

Zhenhao Zou: More than 20 new potential victims come forward after 'prolific' rapist jailed for assaulting 10 women

Another 23 female potential victims have reported that they may have been raped by Zhenhao Zou – the Chinese PhD student detectives believe may be one of the country’s most prolific sex offenders.

The Metropolitan Police launched an international appeal after Zou, 28, was convicted of drugging and raping 10 women following a trial at the Inner London Crown Court last month.

Detectives have not confirmed whether the 23 people who have come forward add to their estimates that more than 50 other women worldwide may have been targeted by the University College London student.

Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth said: “We have victims reaching out to us from different parts of the globe.

“At the moment, the primary places where we believe offending may have occurred at this time appears to be both in England, here in London, and over in China.”

Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth
Image:
Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth

Zou lived in a student flat in Woburn Place, near Russell Square in central London, and later in a flat in the Uncle building in Churchyard Row in Elephant and Castle, south London.

Read more: How a student described as ‘smart and charming’ was unmasked as a prolific sexual predator

More on China

He had also been a student at Queen’s University Belfast, where he studied mechanical engineering from 2017 until 2019. Police say they have not had any reports from Belfast but added they were “open-minded about that”.

“Given how active and prolific Zou appears to have been with his awful offending, there is every prospect that he could have offended anywhere in the world,” Mr Southworth said.

“We wouldn’t want anyone to write off the fact they may have been a victim of his behaviour simply by virtue of the fact that you are from a certain place.

“The bottom line is, if you think you may have been affected by Zhenhao Zou or someone you know may have been, please don’t hold back. Please make contact with us.”

***ONLY USE IF HE IS CONVICTED OF AT LEAST TWO RAPES***It is feared Zou may have carried out dozens more sex crimes. Pic: Met Police
Image:
Pic: Met Police

Zou used hidden or handheld cameras to record his attacks, and kept the footage and often the women’s belongings as souvenirs.

He targeted young, Chinese women, inviting them to his flat for drinks or to study, before drugging and assaulting them.

Zou was convicted of 11 counts of rape, with two of the offences relating to one victim, as well as three counts of voyeurism, 10 counts of possession of an extreme pornographic image, one count of false imprisonment and three counts of possession of a controlled drug with intent to commit a sexual offence, namely butanediol.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Moment police arrest rapist student

Mr Southworth said: “Of those 10 victims, several were not identified so as we could be sure exactly where in the world they were, but their cases, nevertheless, were sufficient to see convictions at court.

“There were also, at the time, 50 videos that were identified of further potential female victims of Zhenhao Zou’s awful crimes.

“We are still working to identify all of those women in those videos.

“We have now, thankfully, had 23 victim survivors come forward through the appeal that we’ve conducted, some of whom may be identical with some of the females that we saw in those videos, some of whom may even turn out to be from the original indicted cases.”

Mr Southworth added: “Ultimately, now it’s the investigation team’s job to professionally pick our way through those individual pieces of evidence, those individual victims’ stories, to see if we can identify who may have been a victim, when and where, so then we can bring Zou to justice for the full extent of his crimes.”

Mr Southworth said more resources will be put into the investigation, and that detectives are looking to understand “what may have happened without wishing to revisit the trauma, but in a way that enables [the potential victims] to give evidence in the best possible way.”

The Metropolitan Police is appealing to anyone who thinks they may have been targeted by Zou to contact the force either by emailing survivors@met.police.uk, or via the major incident public portal on the force’s website.

Continue Reading

UK

Girl, 11, who went missing after entering River Thames named

Published

on

By

Girl, 11, who went missing after entering River Thames named

An 11-year-old girl who went missing after entering the River Thames has been named as Kaliyah Coa.

An “extensive search” has been carried out after the incident in east London at around 1.30pm on Monday.

Police said the child had been playing during a school inset day and entered the water near Barge House Causeway, North Woolwich.

A recovery mission is now said to be under way to find Kaliyah along the Thames, with the Metropolitan Police carrying out an extensive examination of the area.

Location of Barge House Causeway, North Woolwich, where 11-year-old girl Kaliyah Coa went into the River Thames on 31/03
Image:
Barge House Causeway is a concrete slope in North Woolwich leading into the Thames

Chief Superintendent Dan Card thanked members of the public and emergency teams who responded to “carry out a large-scale search during a highly pressurised and distressing time”.

He also confirmed drone technology and boats were being used to “conduct a thorough search over a wide area”.

He added: “Our specialist officers are supporting Kaliyah’s family through this deeply upsetting time and our thoughts go out to all those impacted by what has happened.”

More from UK

“Equally we appreciate this has affected the wider community who have been extremely supportive. You will see extra officers in the area during the coming days.”

Read more from Sky News:
What is Trump’s liberation day about?
Woman rescued 91 hours after quake
‘Exceptional’ codebreaker dies at 101

On Monday, Kerry Benadjaoud, a 62-year-old resident from the area, said she heard of the incident from her next-door neighbour, who “was outside doing her garden and there was two little kids running, and they said ‘my friend’s in the water'”.

When she arrived at the scene with a life ring, a man told her he had called the police, “but he said at the time he could see her hands going down”.

Barge House Causeway is a concrete slope that goes directly into the River Thames and is used to transport boats.

Residents pointed out that it appeared to be covered in moss and was slippery.

Continue Reading

UK

Planning reforms to ‘rewire the system’ and get Britain building – all while protecting wildlife

Published

on

By

Planning reforms to 'rewire the system' and get Britain building - all while protecting wildlife

Major developers will only deal with one regulator under planning reforms which ministers say will “rewire the system” to get Britain building – all while protecting the environment. 

A review by former Labour adviser Dan Corry into Britain’s sluggish system of green regulation has concluded that existing environmental regulators should remain in place, while rejecting a “bonfire of regulations”.

But Mr Corry suggested there might be circumstances in which the government look at changing the wildlife and habit rules inherited from the EU, which protect individual species.

Politics latest: Follow live updates

These lie at the centre of the controversy of a £120m bat tunnel – the shed in Aylesbury which protects a rare breed from future high speed trains.

Keir Starmer has declared war on £100m HS2 bat shed – but has he got a solution?
New planning bill could be the government’s most important – but will it work in practice?

The government has now explicitly ruled out any such change in this parliament.

More from Politics

Campaigners have questioned whether the changes go far enough and will make a major difference to the rate and scale of building in the UK.

Speaking to Sky News, Environment Secretary Steve Reed insisted that accepting nine of the recommendations from the Corry review would amount to wholesale reform.

The minister said: “We can get a win-win for economic growth and for nature. And that is why we are moving ahead with proposals such as appointing a lead regulator for major developments so that the developers don’t have to navigate the architecture of multiple regulators.

“They just work for a single regulator who manages all the others on their behalf. Simplifying the online planning portal.

“These are huge changes that will save developers billions of pounds and speed up decisions doing damage to the environment.”

Mr Reed insisted that there would be “no more bat tunnels” built, even though the Corry review suggests that more work needs to be done to look again at the relevant guidance.

It says: “Rapidly reviewing the existing catalogue of compliance guidance, including on protecting bats, will identify opportunities to remove duplication, ambiguity or inconsistency.

“Natural England has already agreed to review and update their advice to Local Planning Authorities on bats to ensure there is clear, proportionate and accessible advice available.”

The review will mean:

• Appointing one lead regulator for every major infrastructure project, like Heathrow expansion

• A review on how nature rules are implemented – but not the rules themselves

• Insisting regulators focus more on government priorities, particularly growth

Economist and former charity leader Mr Corry, who led the review, said it shows that “simply scrapping regulations isn’t the answer”.

“Instead we need modern, streamlined regulation that is easier for everyone to use. While short-term trade-offs may be needed, these reforms will ultimately deliver a win-win for both nature and economic growth in the longer run.”

However, Sam Richards from Britain Remade, a thinktank trying to get Britain growing, said that while the steps are welcome, the number of regulators that report to the environment department would remain the same before and after the review. He questioned whether this would have the impact ministers claimed.

Continue Reading

Trending