Former top adviser Dominic Cummings today branded Boris Johnson a 'joke' in the wake of the first Covid inquiry
Dominic Cummings today branded Boris Johnson a 'joke' in the wake of a devastating report laying bare No10's failures throughout the Covid pandemic.
Speaking to Sky News outside his home, the former chief adviser said: 'Me and others put into place work to try to improve the system in 2020 after the first wave.
'Unfortunately, the Prime Minister being the joke that he is has not pushed that work through.
'Now we have a joke Prime Minister and a joke leader of the Labour party, and we obviously need a new political system.'
The report, published today by the health and science committees at the House of Commons, revealed a catalogue of errors at the top of Government.
The MPs said ministers were blinded by 'groupthink' among scientific advisers, who wrongly wanted to manage the spread of the virus rather than suppress it.
They also castigated the 'chaotic' performance of the £37billion test and trace system, and said early decisions on lockdowns and social distancing ranked as 'one of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced'.
Minister Stephen Barclay refused to apologise 11 times for the mistakes that had led to thousands of deaths in Britain today.
He was repeatedly pressed by Sky News presenter Kay Burley to say sorry to Britons, but the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster instead dodged the questions.
Families of Covid victims today blasted the report as 'laughable', with a spokeswoman saying that it 'barely mentions the over 150,000 bereaved families'.
She added: 'Sadly, this is what we expected, as the committee explicitly refused to speak to us or amny bereaved families, instead insisting they were only interested in speaking to their colleagues and friends.'
The first major inquiry into the Covid crisis has concluded that many thousands of care home residents died needlessly in the pandemic. Pictured: Mike Carr and Katie Ffolloitt-Powell of the Patient Transport Services of South Central Ambulance Services help to settle an elderly non-COVID-19 patient into a care home after moving her from hospital, near Portsmouth
The report is likely to anger families who lost loved ones and increase the pressure for the independent judge-led inquiry to begin as soon as possible. Other devastating findings include:
The UK’s response was too ‘narrowly and inflexibly based on a flu model’ that failed to learn lessons from Sars, Mers and Ebola; This was a ‘serious early error’ when other countries were taking drastic action; The lack of a proper test and trace system early on meant a full lockdown was ‘inevitable’ and should have come sooner; Decision-making was dysfunctional with the exchange of important information between public bodies ‘inadequate’; Death rates among black, Asian and minority ethnic communities and those with learning disabilities were unacceptably high.
Jeremy Hunt and Greg Clark, the Tory MPs who chair the two committees, said that while the vaccine drive had been ‘boldly planned and effectively executed’ there were also ‘big mistakes’.
One was that hospitals discharged patients into care homes without testing them for the virus because officials were focused on ‘protecting the NHS’.
The report describes Covid-19 as a ‘scourge of the elderly’ and says over-80s were 70 times more likely to die than those aged under 40. Yet in the first month of lockdown around 25,000 patients were discharged into care homes without being checked for Covid.
This had the devastating impact of ‘seeding’ the disease among the vulnerable. Almost one in four people who died from Covid-19 lived in a care home, with 41,675 residents succumbing to the virus up until this May.
The report notes: ‘The UK was not alone in suffering significant loss of life in care homes, but the tragic scale of loss was among the worst in Europe and could have been mitigated.’
This rapid discharge of people from hospitals into care homes ‘led to many thousands of deaths which could have been avoided’.
The inquiry also says Covid-19 exposed decades of underfunding and neglect of the entire social care system.
Extending to 151 pages, the report draws on evidence from former health secretary Matt Hancock, chief scientist Sir Patrick Vallance and chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty.
The report also found that the UK’s response was too ‘narrowly and inflexibly based on a flu model’ that failed to learn lessons from Sars, Mers and Ebola. Pictured: NHS workers in PPE take a patient at St Thomas' Hospital on April 10, 2020 in London
The damning findings of the report also show the UK’s response was also ‘severely hampered’ by the ‘slow, uncertain, and often chaotic performance’ of the test, trace and isolate system. Pictured: warnings in Westminster in January of this year
Ruthie Henshall visits her mother Gloria in her care home
West End star Ruthie Henshall campaigned for better care home visiting rights during the pandemic as she watched her mother’s health deteriorate.
Miss Henshall, 54, said her mother Gloria, who lived in a home in Suffolk before her death in May aged 88, had been ‘starved of human affection’ by cruel visiting limits.
She told how her family were ‘angry and devastated’ by restrictions placed on visits.
In March, when guidelines allowed residents one ‘named visitor’, Miss Henshall was able to be in the same room as her mother and hold her hand for the first time in a year.
‘It will remain one of the most beautiful days of my life,’ she said.
‘Because I had fought so hard for that moment and it meant so much, it was incredibly moving.’
Miss Henshall added some home providers abused residents’ human rights to ‘meaningful contact’ with loved ones because the guidance to allow a named visitor was not law.
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It makes 38 recommendations. The delay in imposing the first lockdown stemmed from flawed advice from scientific advisers, the report finds. Ministers felt ‘unable to challenge’ members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies even as it became clear a catastrophe was unfolding.
The UK’s response was also ‘severely hampered’ by the ‘slow, uncertain, and often chaotic performance’ of the test, trace and isolate system.
This was partly because NHS Test and Trace was established only when daily infections had risen to 2,000, with the result that it ‘ultimately failed in its stated objective to prevent future lockdowns despite vast quantities of taxpayers’ money being directed to it’.
Test and Trace was set up in May last year with a budget of £22billion. Since then it has been allocated £15billion more – £37billion over two years.
MPs brand the decision to stop community testing in March 2020 a ‘serious mistake’ and a ‘seminal failure’ because it meant officials were no longer able to track the spread of the virus.
However, the report notes that the UK ‘outperformed’ other countries with the development and rollout of vaccines and trials of treatments.
Caroline Abrahams of the charity Age UK said: ‘Social care was something of an afterthought during the early terrifying months of Covid-19.
‘Tens of thousands died as a result, leaving their families wondering whether their loved ones could have been saved if we had been better prepared as a nation, and more savvy in government about the role and capability of this vital public service.’
Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the British Medical Association, criticised ministers for delays while the virus was ‘spiralling out of control’.
Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s health spokesman, described the errors as ‘monumental’, adding: ‘At every step ministers ignored warnings, responded with complacency and were too slow to act.’
Hannah Brady, of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, criticised the inquiry for failing to speak to them. She added: ‘The report it has produced is laughable – it is an attempt to ignore and gaslight bereaved families, who will see it as a slap in the face.
‘All this report has proved is that the judge-led independent inquiry must have families at its heart.’
A Government spokesman said: ‘Throughout the pandemic we have been guided by scientific and medical experts and we never shied away from taking quick and decisive action to save lives and protect our NHS, including introducing restrictions and lockdowns.
‘We are committed to learning lessons from the pandemic and have committed to holding a full public inquiry in spring.’
Over 150,000 UK people are believed to have died from coronavirus.
Report blasts ministers for failing to lockdown sooner after following flawed advice
By Eleanor Hayward for the Daily Mail
Ministers failed to challenge flawed advice from Government scientists which allowed Covid to rip through Britain, the damning inquiry concluded.
Today’s report said the UK’s failure to lock down early enough stemmed from ‘false groupthink’ among members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).
In a
