UK Covid-19 Inquiry: Scottish Government response was 'too little, too late'

Government response to the Covid-19 pandemic was often “too little, too late”, Baroness Heather Hallett has found, with devolved administrations “too reliant” on Westminster to lead.

The UK’s four governments are said to have “failed to appreciate the scale of the threat” of coronavirus with“misleading assurances” from the UK Government’s Department of Health and Social Care compounding the problem, alongside the idea that the UK was well-prepared for a health crisis.

And if restrictions like quarantine and social distancing had been put in place more quickly, lockdown in March 2020 may have been shorter or avoided altogether, with thousands of lives also saved.

The findings come from the second report issued by the UK Covid-19 inquiry, a cross-border probe established by the UK Government and chaired by Hallett. A separate Scotland-only inquiry instigated by Holyrood ministers is ongoing.

Hallett said politicians and administrators had been presented with “unenviable choices” and had been working under “extreme pressure”. “Whatever decision they took, there was often no right answer or good outcome,” she said. 

However, she said “the warning signs were there” and “the tempo of the response should have been increased” when scientists realised there were more cases in China than were initally reported, and that the virus was spreading across borders.

The report follows a string of evidence sessions with the politicians who made key decisions during the health crisis, which saw schools shut and households isolated as the virus took hold.

Scotland’s first case of Covid was confirmed by then-health secretary Jeane Freeman in March 2020. Ten days later, the World Health Organisation declared coronavirus was a global pandemic.

Three days after that, the first death in Scotland to the virus was confirmed and self-isolation guidance for anyone showing signs of the illness soon followed. As the situation escalated, so too did instructions from government, including the cancellation of that year’s school exams, lockdown, and social distancing. “I am not going to sugarcoat it in any way," then first minister Nicola Sturgeon said at the time. "Coronavirus is the biggest challenge of our lifetime.”

Vaccinations began in December 2020 but it wasn’t until spring 2022 that enhanced infection control measures finally ended, with testing centres closed and contract tracing over.

By that time, more than 10,000 people in Scotland had died within 28 days of a positive Covid test.

For the UK as a whole, Covid-19 was listed as one of the causes for as many as 227,000 deaths between March 2020 and May 2023.

While many of the restrictions in Scotland aligned with those put in place by Downing Street, with a joint action plan issued in March 2020, the Scottish Government did take separate decisions, with divergence in the lifting of lockdown rules.

The inquiry found none of the four governments had a strategy for exiting the first lockdown or had given enough thought to the chance of a second wave. The wider social and economic impact of lockdown were not given enough scrutiny, the panel said, particularly on children.

Evidence sessions by the inquiry heard how governments scrambled to organise their response.

But many records of decision-making were either lost or non-existent, with no notes taken at ‘Gold Command’ meetings set up by Sturgeon and WhatsApp messages sent and received by Sturgeon, then deputy first minister John Swinney and others deleted or lost.

This was also the case for UK ministers including then prime minister Boris Johnson, his Scottish secretary Alister Jack and Michael Gove, who was chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

Before the report was released, Labour’s Anas Sarwar used First Minister’s Questions to press Swinney on the Scottish Government’s Covid performance, and in particular the decision to allow Covid-positive and untested patients to be admitted into care homes.

“Right across the country, people have the common sense not to go visit their granny when they’ve got a cold,” Sarwar said, telling Swinney “you don't need clinical advice to know that sending people with the virus to live with the people most vulnerable to the virus would lead to deaths” and asking the FM to “apologise for this disastrous and catastrophic decision”.

Swinney said the crisis was “an incredibly difficult period for everyone”, adding: “I express today my heartfelt sympathies to everyone who lost a loved one during the pandemic, and also to those who suffered a tremendous level of disruption to their lives.”

Ministers “acted at all times based on the best information that was available to them at the time”, he added, saying that “there was no guidebook about what we were dealing with”.

“I have been very clear that I regret the suffering that individuals experienced during the period of Covid,” the first minister said. “It did enormous damage to people. People lost loved ones. It did enormous damage to our society and we are still dealing with the consequences”.

Other decisions by government are also said to have encouraged the spread of the virus, such as the Eat Out to Help Out scheme launched by then-chancellor Rishi Sunak in 2020. The initiative was supposed to help the hospitality sector and included a government-backed 50 per cent discount. Reservations spiked, but Patrick Vallance, then the UK Government’s chief scientific advisor, and Matt Hancock, who was the health secretary, said they were unaware of the scheme until the day of its announcement.

Appearing before the panel, Hancock – who lost the post after breaching Covid conduct rules in an affair with an aide – said Sturgeon had acted in a way that was “unhelpful and would cause confusion to the public”, making announcements on UK-wide decisions before Westminster leaders.

In her evidence, a tearful Sturgeon – who said Brexit planning had diverted resources – was asked if she thought she was “the right first minister” to tackle the pandemic.

“No, that's not how I would have thought of it at all,” she said. “I was the first minister when the pandemic struck – there’s a large part of me that wishes I hadn’t been, but I was – and I wanted to be the best first minister I could be during that period. It’s for others to judge the extent which I succeeded.”

On whether she saw a chance for “political opportunity” then, she said she had seen “a threat, a risk, a catastrophe”. “At times in those early days I felt overwhelmed by the scale of what we were dealing with,” she said. “And perhaps more than anything, I felt an overwhelming responsibility to do the best I could.”

Hallett, who slammed the “toxic and chaotic culture” of Boris Johnson's administration, found a “lack of trust” between ministers in Holyrood and Westminster affected the approach to decision-making, and though Sturgeon was “serious and diligent” in leadership, there is criticism of the way she took decisions in a small group, with ministers excluded and transparency comprimised.

There was “constant tension” between the UK and the Scottish governments, most due to the “personal and political antipathy” between Johnson and Sturgeon, which is said to have played a part in Johnson’s decision not to chair four-nations meetings.

“This was also not conducive to effective intergovernmental relations or to good decision-making, and therefore it was not in the interests of the people of the UK,” the report said. “It is self-evident that, in any future pandemic, political antipathies or discord need to be set aside to better address the exigencies of the emergency.”

The report is the second by the inquiry, with the first stating that UK and devolved governments had “failed their citizens” over a lack of preparation.

Now it is calling for “urgent reform and clarification of the structures for decision-making during emergencies” by each of the four governments.

Laws and guidance must be easier to understand, it found, with greater parliamentary scrutiny of the use of emergency powers and more thought given to the impact that decisions might have on those most at risk of harm.

The inquiry continues, with a report on the pandemic's impact on healthcare across the UK set to be published next year, followed by six others by summer 2027.

Evidence on the economic response to the crisis will start next week.