All four UK governments failed to appreciate the scale of the threat posed by COVID-19 or the urgency of the response the pandemic required, a damning report published on Thursday has claimed.

Baroness Heather Hallett, the chair of the inquiry, described the response to the pandemic as “too little, too late”.

Tens of thousands of lives could have been saved during the first wave of COVID-19 had a mandatory lockdown been introduced a week earlier, the inquiry also found.

Noting how a “lack of urgency” made a mandatory lockdown “inevitable”, the report references modelling data to claim there could have been 23,000 fewer deaths during the first wave in England had it been introduced a week earlier.

The UK government first introduced advisory restrictions on 16 March 2020, including self-isolation, household quarantine and social distancing.

Had these measures been introduced sooner, the report states, the mandatory lockdown which followed from 23 March might not have been necessary at all.

COVID-19 first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of 2019, and as it developed into a worldwide pandemic, the UK went in and out of unprecedented lockdown measures for two years starting from March 2020.

Lady Hallett admitted in her summary that politicians in the government and devolved administrations were forced to make decisions where “there was often no right answer or good outcome”.

“Nonetheless,” she said, “I can summarise my findings of the response as ‘too little, too late'”.

‘Toxic culture’ at the heart of UK government

The report said there was “a toxic and chaotic culture” at the heart of the UK government during the pandemic.

The inquiry heard evidence about the “destabilising behaviour of a number of individuals” – including former No 10 adviser Dominic Cummings.

It said that by failing to tackle this chaotic culture – “and, at times, actively encouraging it” – former PM Boris Johnson “reinforced a culture in which the loudest voices prevailed and the views of other colleagues, particularly women, often went ignored, to the detriment of good decision-making”.

‘Misleading assurances’

The inquiry found all four governments in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland failed to understand the urgency of response the pandemic demanded in the early part of 2020.

The report reads: “This was compounded, in part, by misleading assurances from the Department of Health and Social Care and the widely held view that the UK was well prepared for a pandemic.”

The report notes how the UK government took a “high risk” when it significantly eased restrictions in England in July 2020 – “despite scientific advisers’ concerns about the public health risks of doing so”.

Lady Hallett has made 19 key recommendations which, if followed, she believes will better protect the UK in any future pandemic and improve decision-making in a crisis.

Repeated failings ‘inexcusable’

In a statement following the publication of Thursday’s report, Lady Hallett said there was a “serious failure” by all four governments to appreciate the level of “risk and calamity” facing the UK.

She said: “The tempo of the response should have been increased. It was not. February 2020 was a lost month.”

Read more:
A timeline of the UK’s response to the pandemic

Lady Hallett said the inquiry does not advocate for national lockdowns, which she said should have been avoided if at all possible.

She said: “But to avoid them, governments must take timely and decisive action to control a spreading virus. The four governments of the UK did not.”

Lady Hallett said none of the governments were adequately prepared for the challenges and risks that a lockdown presented, and that many of the same failings were repeated later in 2020, which she said was “inexcusable”.

She added: “Each government had ample warning that the prevalence of the virus was increasing and would continue to do so into the winter months. Yet again, there was a failure to take timely and effective action.”

A fierce warning from Britain’s defence secretary to Vladimir Putin to turn his spy ship away from UK waters or face the consequences was a very public attempt to deter the threat.

But unless John Healey backs his rhetoric up with a far more urgent push to rearm – and to rebuild wider national resilience – he risks his words ringing as hollow as his military.

The defence secretary on Wednesday repeated government plans to increase defence spending and work with NATO allies to bolster European security.

Instead of focusing purely on the threat, he also stressed how plans to buy weapons and build arms factories will create jobs and economic growth.

In a sign of the government’s priorities, job creation is typically the top line of any Ministry of Defence press release about its latest investment in missiles, drones and warships rather than why the equipment is vital to defend the nation.

I doubt expanding employment opportunities was the motivating factor in the 1930s when the UK converted car factories into Spitfire production lines to prepare for war with Nazi Germany.

Yet communicating to the public what war readiness really means must surely be just as important today.

Mr Healey also chose this moment of national peril to attempt to score political points by criticising the previous Conservative government for hollowing out the armed forces – when the military was left in a similarly underfunded state during the last Labour government.

A report by a group of MPs, released on the same day as Mr Healey rattled his sabre at Russia, underlined the scale of the challenge the UK faces.

It accused the government of lacking a national plan to defend itself from attack.

The Defence Select Committee also warned that Mr Healey, Sir Keir Starmer and the rest of the cabinet are moving at a “glacial” pace to fix the problem and are failing to launch a “national conversation on defence and security” – something the prime minister had promised last year.

The report backed up the findings of a wargame podcast by Sky News and Tortoise that simulated what might happen if Russia launched waves of missile strikes against the UK.

The series showed how successive defence cuts since the end of the Cold War means the army, navy and air force are woefully equipped to defend the home front.

Read more:
Russia accuses Britain of being ‘provocative’ as spy ship nears UK
Briton who volunteered as spy for Russia jailed

But credible national defences also require the wider country to be prepared for war.

A set of plans setting out what must happen in the transition from peace to war was quietly shelved at the start of this century, so there no longer exists a rehearsed and resourced system to ensure local authorities, businesses and the wider population know what to do.

Mr Healey revealed that the Russian spy ship had directed a laser light presumably to dazzle pilots of a Royal Air Force reconnaissance aircraft that was tracking it.

“That Russian action is deeply dangerous,” he said.

“So, my message to Russia and to Putin, is this: We see you. We know what you are doing. And if Yantar travels south this week, we are ready.”

He did not spell out what this might mean but it could include attempts to block the Russian vessel’s passage, or even fire warning shots to force it to retreat.

However, any direct engagement could trigger a retaliation from Moscow.

For now, the Russian ship – fitted with spying equipment to monitor critical national infrastructure such as communications cables on the seabed – has moved away from the UK coast. It was at its closest between 5 and 11 November.

The military is still tracking its movements closely in case the ship returns.

If you’re not at the table then you’re on the menu, as the saying goes.

That’s why Ukraine and Europe are so concerned about reports of a new peace plan being drawn up without them.

Their fears appear to be well-founded. The plan’s proposals reportedly include two major concessions for Kyiv – that it must give up territory in the Donbas which Russia has not yet seized, and that it must dramatically reduce its armed forces.

Ukraine war latest: Trump ‘approves 28-point Ukraine peace plan’

Sound familiar? That’s because it is. These are two of Vladimir Putin’s long-held, key demands for peace.

The ‘new’ peace plan represents the latest about-turn from the Trump administration on how it approaches the conflict.

After the failure of the Alaska summit, and last month’s fractious phone call between Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and US secretary of state Marco Rubio (which led to the cancellation of a second summit in Budapest and US sanctions on Russian oil), it seemed like Ukraine had finally convinced Donald Trump to change tack.

Instead of showing Moscow patience, he began applying pressure in the hope of forcing Russia to make concessions and to meet Ukraine somewhere in the middle.

But now it’s all change once again.

The key player seems to have been Kirill Dmitriev – the Kremlin’s investment envoy and a close ally of Vladimir Putin – who has operated as Steve Witkoff’s opposite number in peace negotiations.

Whenever the US special envoy has been in Moscow this year, Dmitriev has always been close by. He is Putin’s Witkoff whisperer.

After the Lavrov-Rubio bust-up, Dmitriev was sent to Miami to supposedly patch things up through Witkoff. He did more than, it seems.

Read more from Sky News:
Witkoff’s ‘secret’ plan to end war
Navy could react to laser incident

What’s reportedly emerged from their discussions is a 28-point peace plan that has been signed off by Donald Trump.

Will Ukraine go for it? I very much doubt it.

If the reports are correct, the US-Russia proposals merely represent the Kremlin’s long-held demands, and Ukraine’s long-held red lines. For Kyiv, it’s a non-starter.

But President Zelenskyy will have to tread carefully. Failure to show engagement could rile Donald Trump and trigger an ultimatum – accept this plan or you’re on your own.