Government lacked pre-planning for Covid pandemic, says National Audit Office

THE government lacked plans to manage the mass disruption at the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic last year, the National Audit Office (NAO) said.

The office informed when coronavirus struck in early spring last year, the government lacked plans for many areas of its response in England, including identifying who needed to shield and managing mass disruption to schooling.

The report by NAO revealed that there had been problems setting up employment support schemes and around 2.9 million people were not eligible.

"While the response to the pandemic has provided new learning from both what has worked well and what has not worked well, it has also laid bare existing fault lines within society, such as the risk of widening inequalities, and within public service delivery and government itself," NAO said.

The NAO said in its report that communications had not always been clear and timely, stating that guidance on personal protective equipment (PPE) changed 30 times up to the end of last July.

There had not always been a clear audit trail to support decisions to award PPE contracts.

The NAO warned that the hundreds of billions of pounds spent in response to the pandemic so far may have an impact on the longer-term sustainability of the public finances.

According to BBC report, UK government borrowing hit £303bn in the financial year 2020-21 - the highest amount, as a proportion of national income, since 1946.

NAO head Gareth Davies said: "Covid-19 has required government to respond to an exceptionally challenging and rapidly changing threat.

"There is much to learn from the successes and failures in government's response."

Lessons learned were "not only important for the remaining phases of the current pandemic, but should also help better prepare the UK for future emergencies", Mr Davies said.