COVID ‘exposed’ UK’s vulnerability and government was not ‘fully prepared’, report finds
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”.
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“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.
“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.
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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.
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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.”
The flying of St George’s flags across the country are creating “no-go” zones for NHS staff, with some facing frequent abuse, health bosses have warned.
Several NHS trust chief executives and leaders have said staff feel intimidated by the national symbols, including when they make home visits.
The findings follow a survey conducted among senior managers, 45% of whom were extremely concerned about discrimination towards staff.
A leader of a trust said anonymously that there were safety issues around how they work in the community, with nurses regularly visiting patients in their homes alone.
He said: “You’re going in on your own, you’re locking the door behind you.
“I have been into homes with people who have been convicted of sex offences, and we go in and provide care to them.
“It can be a really precarious situation, and they [the nurses] handle that absolutely brilliantly.
“The autonomy and the clinical decisions that they make within that, I think, is fantastic.
“We saw during the time when the flags went up – our staff, who are a large minority of black and Asian staff, feeling deliberately intimidated.
“It felt like the flags were up creating no-go zones. That’s what it felt like to them.
“You add that on top of real autonomous working, that real bravery of working in people’s homes, with an environment… [where] it feels like it’s an area that’s designed to exclude them.
“Our staff continue to work in that environment, and I think they deserve our real praise and thanks as a nation, frankly, for doing that within those really difficult circumstances.”
He added his trust had also seen “individual instances of aggression towards staff”.
File pic: iStock
Another NHS trust leader said a member of staff, who is white and has children of mixed heritage, had asked some people putting up flags to move so she could park her car.
“The individuals filmed what was happening, and then followed her, and she continued to receive abuse over a series of several days, not because she objected to the flags, but because she disturbed them,” they said.
“There are lots of stories like that. There are lots of stories where people have tried to take flags down outside of their own homes and have been abused and threatened as a consequence of that.”
The leader said the “springing up of flags everywhere has created another form of intimidation and concern for many, many of our staff”.
Daniel Elkes, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents trusts, said: “The NHS has relied on overseas recruitment for a long time to ensure we have the right workforce.
“We have a really diverse workforce and without that you can’t deliver the NHS.
“We are trying to recruit from the very places where we provide healthcare so the intake into the NHS is representative of British people from more diverse backgrounds.”
Professor Nicola Ranger, the Royal College of Nursing’s general secretary, said: “Following a summer of further racist disorder, it is little wonder a growing number of nursing staff report feeling unsafe, particularly when having to work on their own and often at night.
“The government and all politicians have to stop pandering to dangerous anti-migrant sentiments and employers must prioritise tackling racism and work with trade unions to develop stronger mechanisms to protect staff.”
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A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said there was “no place for intimidation, racism or abuse in our country or our NHS”, adding that threats and aggression should be reported to police.
They said the government valued the “diversity of our NHS”, and that workers “must be treated with dignity and respect”.
“Our flags represent our history, our heritage, and our values,” they said. “They are a symbol of our nation and belong to all of us – not just some of us.”
The survey findings come ahead of strike action by resident doctors over pay and jobs due to take place on Friday for five days.
A woman caught with £5bn in Bitcoin in the UK’s highest ever value money laundering investigation has been jailed for 11 years and eight months – after nearly five years on the run.
Zhimin Qian, 47, sat up in bed looking stunned when police kicked open the bedroom door of an Airbnb in a York suburb on 22 April last year.
She vanished and went on the run after officers seized more than 61,000 Bitcoin in the country’s biggest cryptocurrency seizure in a raid of her rented £5m home next to Hampstead Heath.
Qian – who fled China after carrying out a huge fraud and arrived in the UK in 2017 on a false St Kitts and Nevis passport in the name of Yadi Zhang – pleaded guilty to two money laundering offences at Southwark Crown Court.
Police said she styled herself the “Goddess of Wealth” and wore imperial robes as her sales teams offered 300% returns at conferences in luxury hotels in China promoting her “Britain Nice Life Insurance” scheme.
In a slick video played to targets, the narrator says “Britain is a nation of glories and dreams” over footage of the Houses of Parliament, Oxford University, Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and the City of London.
Qian was already wanted in China over two other scams when she orchestrated the gigantic investment fraud, conning more than 128,000 victims from every province out of 40bn Yuan (around £4.6bn) between 2014 and 2017.
More than 80 people have been convicted in China over the scam, but Qian converted some of the proceeds into more than 70,000 Bitcoin and fled, crossing the border into Myanmar on a moped before arriving at Heathrow Airport in September 2017.
Jian Wen. Pic: CPS
The women rented a £17,000-a-month house in Hampstead. Pic: CPS
She recruited Jian Wen, who left her job in a south London Chinese takeaway, and the women moved into a £17,000-a-month rented £5m house next to Hampstead Heath, posing as the bosses on an international jewellery business.
They travelled extensively across Europe, buying jewellery and spending tens of thousands of pounds on designer clothes and shoes in Harrods, while Wen bought a £25,000 E-Class Mercedes and sent her son to the £6,000-a-term Heathside preparatory school.
Qian made extensive notes about her “grandiose” plans to increase her social standing.
She wanted to meet a royal duke, hoped the Dalai Lama would anoint her as a reincarnated Goddess, and dreamed of ruling Liberland – an unrecognised micronation on the Croation side of the Danube – as Queen.
The women travelled extensively. Pic: Met Police
Wen tried to buy Hampstead property. Pic: Met Police
But the women came to the attention of police when they tried to buy a £24m seven-bedroom Hampstead mansion with a swimming pool, using more than £800,000 converted from Bitcoin.
Officers raided their home in October 2018 and seized £300,000 in cash and cheques, along with phones and laptops, and found a hand drawn “treasure map” leading from Harrods to a safety deposit box containing more devices.
When investigators finally accessed the cryptocurrency wallets stored on them, they thought someone had put the decimal point in the wrong place.
The 61,279 Bitcoin was then worth £1.4bn and has now soared to more than £5bn, making it the biggest ever cryptocurrency seizure in Britain and, until recently, the world.
Read more: How Chinese takeaway worker led police to biggest ever Bitcoin seizure
Police believed Qian had left the country, but shortly before Wen was found guilty of money laundering offences in March last year, Detective Constable Joe Ryan detected activity on a cryptocurrency exchange from a wallet linked to Qian, which hadn’t been used since 2019.
The exchange provided details of the account holder – Seng Hok Ling, a Malaysian national with a previous conviction for fraud in Hong Kong in 2015, who was living in Matlock, Derbyshire.
Seng Hok Ling arrives at a rented property. Pic: Met Police
Qian disguises her appearance while on the run. Pic: Met Police
Working on the theory he may be in contact with Qian, detectives stepped up the manhunt, which took them all over the UK, before they identified her at a detached house in a York suburb.
When police kicked open the upstairs bedroom door, there was Qian, lying under a bright red duvet and struggling to put on her top as she stared wide eyed at officers from behind her thick glasses.
Detective Constable Chris Woods told colleagues: “It’s her.”
A ledger and passwords found sewn inside a purpose-made concealed pocket in the jogging bottoms she was wearing, led investigators to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency worth around £67m.
Ling had helped her stay on the run, providing false documents and money laundering services, and renting Airbnb properties, including a house in Glasgow and a remote farmhouse near Loch Tay in the Scottish Highlands.
The court heard he tried to get one passport in the name of dead Hong Kong actress Dianxia Shen.
Staff made to sign confidentiality agreements. Pic: Met Police
A rotating entourage of cooks, drivers and security guards were employed on lucrative contracts to look after Qian, who they assumed was a rich recluse.
They were made to sign strict confidentiality agreements, which barred them from using Chinese devices or apps and photographing, recording or videoing “anyone or anything indoors or outdoors” – with breaches resulting in dismissal and fines of up to $30,000.
Metropolitan Police officers travelled to Beijing and Tianjin to speak to victims of the fraud, some of whom had lost their life savings, seen their family collapse or been left unable to pay for medical care.
Chinese police officers were lined up to become the first in history to give evidence in a UK court, but Qian pleaded guilty on the first day of the trial, while Ling also admitted a money laundering charge.
The court heard that since being in prison Qian has had poetry published and her artwork displayed at an exhibition.
Wen was jailed for six years and eight months last year, and the sentencing of Qian and Ling marks the end of what the Met’s head of economic and cyber crime called “one of the longest running and most complex economic crime investigations” in the force’s history.
“She lived, while she was on the run in the UK, a relatively reclusive lifestyle. She had that entourage of people around her, but she didn’t venture out much,” he said of Qian.
“And we have some understanding from some of her musings and some of thoughts around what she may do with the rest of her money and her wealth and her life ultimately.
“But thankfully, we were able to catch her and bring her to justice before some of those dreams were realised.”
The fortune is now at the centre of a High Court battle between the UK government and thousands of Chinese victims.
Prosecutors have set up a compensation scheme but lawyers representing those who want to recover their investments say it should reflect the huge rise in the value of Bitcoin and not just what they put in.
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