David Cameron today admitted it was a ‘mistake’ for Britain not to ready itself for ‘different types’ of pandemic with the UK’s past efforts focused on combatting a severe flu outbreak.
The former prime minister, during a grilling by the Covid Inquiry, revealed he was ‘wrestling’ with why more time was spent looking at the risks of a flu pandemic rather than other diseases prior to 2020.
Mr Cameron, who left office after being defeated at the EU referendum in 2016, told the inquiry: ‘Why wasn’t more time and more questions asked about what turned out to be the pandemic that we faced?’
The ex-premier is the first senior politician to give evidence as the probe’s public sessions get under way.
He was quizzed this morning about how the Government prepared for serious disease outbreaks during his six-year spell in No10.
David Cameron today admitted it was a ‘mistake’ for Britain not to ready itself for ‘different types’ of pandemic with the UK’s past efforts focused on combatting a severe flu outbreak
The ex-PM, during a grilling by the Covid Inquiry, revealed he was ‘wrestling’ with why more time was spent looking at the risks of a flu pandemic rather than other diseases prior to 2020
‘When I look at all of this and read all the papers and thought so much about what subsequently happened and the horrors of the Covid pandemic… this is the thing I keep coming back to,’ Mr Cameron said.
‘The pandemic was a tier one risk, pandemics were looked at but there was this – former chief medical officer Sally Davies said it was groupthink – much more time was spent on pandemic flu and the dangers of pandemic flu rather than on potential pandemics of other more respiratory diseases like Covid turned out to be.
‘This is so important because so many consequences followed from that and I’ve been wrestling with [that].’
Mr Cameron insisted the ‘architecture’ in Whitehall for dealing with pandemics or other risks was ‘good’.
But he added: ‘That’s where I keep coming back to – so much time was spent on a pandemic influenza, and that was seen as the greatest danger and we have very bad years for flu, so it is a big danger – but why wasn’t more time and more questions asked about what turned out to be the pandemic that we faced?
‘It’s very hard to answer why that’s the case and I’m sure this public inquiry is going to spend a lot of time on that.’
Mr Cameron said later: ‘It was a mistake not to look at… not to look more at the different types of pandemic.’
Asked about Dame Deirdre Hine’s independent review into the 2009 swine flu pandemic, he said: ‘My reaction to reading Hine was, like many of the other reports, it doesn’t mention the potential for asymptomatic transmission.
‘And so, you know, when you think what would be different if more time had been spent on a highly infectious, asymptomatic pandemic, different recommendations would have been made about what was necessary to prepare for that.’
Mr Cameron, pictured arriving at the Covid Inquiry for his evidence session this morning, is the first senior politician to give evidence as the probe’s public sessions get under way
Mr Cameron’s former Chancellor, George Osborne, and ex-health secretary Jeremy Hunt are also due to be interrogated this week over their roles in government in the decade before coronavirus wreaked havoc.
The inquiry, chaired by Baroness Hallett, is examining how prepared the UK was for the pandemic, including the Government’s economic policies in the years leading up to the disease surfacing.
It heard last week that Britain entered the crisis with ‘depleted’ public services and widening health inequalities.
A report prepared jointly by Prof Sir Michael Marmot, an expert in epidemiology and director of the University College London Institute of Health Equity, and Prof Clare Bambra, an expert in public health from Newcastle University, said austerity policies affected the health of the nation in the lead up to the pandemic.
It is unclear how long each witness will spend giving evidence.
The British Medical Association (BMA) said Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne should be quizzed about the ‘parlous state’ of the NHS due to a decade of spending cuts.
Council chair Professor Philip Banfield said ahead of Monday’s hearing there was ‘no doubt that both staff and patients were put in harm’s way’ because of underfunding in the decade running up to Covid’s arrival.
In a blog written for the union’s website, he wrote: ‘I have seen first-hand the damage wrought by years of austerity and a failure to prioritise the nation’s health. The UK was severely on the back foot when Covid took hold, and this proved disastrous – for the doctors I represent and the millions who suffered at the hands of the virus.
‘It is therefore critical that Cameron, Osborne and Hunt are taken to task over the decisions they made that left us so unprepared, and to ensure the same mistakes are not repeated when we face our next health emergency.’
He added: ‘The question to Cameron, Osborne and Hunt must be: how did you allow the NHS and public health to get to such a parlous state, and fail to prepare so appallingly, that many didn’t stand a fighting chance when the wave crashed over them?’
