Think local, listen to the experts and get diverse voices in the room. If we plan effectively, we can avoid another catastrophe

• Lucy Easthope is an international adviser on disaster response and recovery

It’s hard to know where to start if you are a brand new government taking on a mega-survey of risk and potential emergencies in the UK. Beyond the Covid-19 pandemic, the challenges are many. I am an adviser in UK emergency planning and have worked on almost every disaster involving British citizens since 2001, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the 7 July 2005 London bombings and the Grenfell Tower fire . My inbox is full with questions of how to prepare for prison overspill, plans to prevent any future terrorist attacks, details of the devastating aftermath of constant flooding and updates on several global conflicts. And, of course, there is always the next pandemic to ready ourselves for.

Most inquiry reports that land on our desk suffer from inaccuracies and underresearch. But I was relieved when the Covid inquiry’s findings were released last Thursday. Heather Hallett proved that she gets emergency planning and some of the central tensions within it. She has urged for it be taken seriously at cabinet level – her first recommendation is the need for a ministerial committee for whole-system emergency preparedness chaired by the prime minister. Lady Hallett also recommended a streamlined bureaucracy with fewer jargonistic terms used and a simpler chain of command. She said that an effective response would come best from a disaster agency independent of government. And that a pandemic was no “black swan event”. Ministers need to be comfortable accepting that the reasonable worst-case scenario could happen rather than writing it off as unlikely or as a cynical ploy for more resources.

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Edward Rosen, Jabeer Butt and Edward Lyon respond to the first report of the official Covid inquiry

I attended the launch of the Covid-19 inquiry report by Lady Hallett and I left the viewing room with my emotions all over the place ( UK in ‘worse state’ to deal with pandemic than before Covid, say experts, 19 July ). I remembered my dead colleague, dead patients and a dead friend. But I also remembered our first informal meeting in the NHS, when the possibility of a new pandemic was briefly and nonchalantly discussed. That was in October 1999. Labour was in power and our focus was on innovation and modernisation across the NHS. I was a passionate enthusiast for all this new policy – a cheerful foot soldier for change. Sound familiar?

My contribution as a senior NHS change leader between 2002 and 2005 was to help build a new learning system or infrastructure that included a health observatory capable of horizon scanning for any threats to the NHS and, by default, to the public. This innovation was one arm of the new NHS University, which was designed to provide an integrated learning system across the health sector. The two areas of concern were pandemics and climate change.

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Chancellor understood to believe £2.6bn of public money lost to fraudsters during pandemic could be recouped

Rachel Reeves will appoint a commissioner within weeks tasked with recouping billions from Covid contract fraud, in an initiative that will turn the spotlight on to government waste.

The chancellor is understood to believe the Treasury can recoup £2.6bn from waste, fraud and flawed contracts signed during the pandemic.

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Responsibility for prescriptions moving to 42 integrated care boards has led to patients having to work out how to get treatment, often when ill

Clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) people with Covid are struggling to get timely access to treatments such as antiviral drugs, charities, patients and doctors have warned amid a summer wave of the virus .

People with certain health conditions or who meet other specific criteria are eligible for medications that can help the body fight the virus that causes Covid. They include those 85 years or older or who have Down’s syndrome, an organ transplant, a weakened immune system, lung cancer or sickle cell disease.

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Health professionals argue inequalities, crisis in NHS and pressure in care homes leave Britain vulnerable

The UK is probably less well-equipped to cope with a pandemic than it was before Covid because of deteriorating health inequalities, the crisis in the NHS and pressures in care homes, leading experts have warned.

The head of the British Medical Association (BMA) said that the overall situation meant the nation would be “still massively underprepared” when a new pandemic hit.

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Citizens were failed by a lack of planning, and Lady Hallett wants a better system to be built fast

Citizens of all four nations of the UK were failed by politicians and officials who neglected to prepare properly for a pandemic or other civil emergency. Former UK health secretaries Jeremy Hunt and Matt Hancock did not update or improve an inadequate pandemic strategy from 2011, that was geared towards flu rather than a novel virus. Resources that did exist were “constrained” by funding and, after 2018, redirected towards Brexit planning. Ministers were guilty of groupthink and did not make effective use of external experts or challenge scientific advice. The possibility of a lockdown was never seriously considered. Nor was enough attention paid to the likely impact of a pandemic on vulnerable groups .

These highly critical conclusions from the first module of the Covid inquiry are a landmark moment in the process of national reckoning being overseen by Heather Hallett. This is the first time that relatives of the 230,000 people who died of Covid have seen their anger about official failures, both before and during the pandemic, endorsed in such an authoritative way.

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The UK must never succumb to such shocking complacency again. Planning for the next pandemic must start now

In 2002, Sars, a dangerous coronavirus, spread across the world with a fatality rate of around 10%. Although it was contained relatively quickly, east Asian countries learned from this experience and updated their pandemic preparedness plans. Their governments wanted to be ready if the virus returned. On the other side of the world, the UK didn’t react or adapt. Complacency was at play, especially with the assumption that Britain was one of the most prepared countries in the world for a pandemic.

The consequence, as Lady Hallett’s first report from the Covid inquiry notes, is that the UK government failed in its basic responsibility to its citizens of keeping them safe. The UK had too many preventable deaths, not only from Covid, but also from the shutdown of health services and a long lockdown that would have been unnecessary had public health systems been in place.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

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The pandemic caused ‘grief, untold misery and economic turmoil’ which could have been cut if preparations had been in place, report states

• Hancock and Hunt ‘failed to prepare UK for pandemic’
• UK Covid-19 inquiry live – latest updates

Was the UK prepared for Covid? The statutory public inquiry into the pandemic has given its verdict, revealing the impact of austerity and Brexit on the UK’s response and giving bereaved families a measure of vindication and validation. Here are the main points covered in the first of several reports from the inquiry.

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