Covid response of ‘toxic and chaotic’ UK government was ‘too little, too late’, inquiry finds

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The UK’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic was “too little, too late”, an official inquiry has found, adding that poor decisions by ministers and officials led to unnecessary lockdowns and cost tens of thousands of lives.

Politicians in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland “failed to appreciate” the threat of coronavirus in early 2020, inquiry chair Baroness Heather Hallett said, as she singled out a “toxic and chaotic culture” in Boris Johnson’s Downing Street.

In a report published on Thursday, Hallett hit out at the “inexcusable” failure of the UK and the devolved administrations, adding that “the response of the four governments repeatedly amounted to a case of ‘too little, too late’’’.

She said that, according to modelling, 23,000 people had died in England alone because of a delay in imposing the first UK-wide lockdown on March 23 2020. She added that the months-long shutdown “might have been shorter or not necessary” if restrictions on travel and socialising had taken effect sooner. 

Hallett reserved particular criticism for Johnson’s government in London.

She said the then prime minister should have “appreciated sooner” that the situation was an emergency and criticised the “destabilising behaviour” of officials including Dominic Cummings, at the time chief adviser in Number 10. 

“By failing to tackle [Downing Street’s] chaotic culture — and, at times, actively encouraging it — Mr Johnson reinforced a culture in which the loudest voices prevailed and the views of other colleagues, particularly women, often went ignored,” the report concluded.

The findings echo evidence given to the inquiry by current and former ministers and senior officials, in which Johnson was accused of changing “strategic direction every day” and overseeing a workplace culture “contaminated by ego”.

The failures by Johnson — who has acknowledged that his administration “vastly underestimated” the Covid threat — were compounded by “misleading assurances” from the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health and Social Care that the UK was well prepared for a pandemic, the report said. 

Health secretary Matt Hancock gained a reputation within government for “overpromising and underdelivering”, Hallett wrote in the second interim report of the inquiry, which is due to run until the summer of 2026.  

In her first report in July last year, which accused ministers of “failing” citizens, Hallett said that for a year under Hancock’s watch, between 2018 and 2019, the main body charged with pandemic preparedness had ceased to meet.