Coronavirus exposed weakness of British state and society, National Audit Office says

Watchdog criticises government for lack of planning

Boris Johnson leaves No 10 (PA)

The government has been criticised by its Whitehall watchdog for failing to properly prepare for a threat of the scale of coronavirus.

In a report released on Wednesday the National Audit Office (NAO) said Covid-19 has exposed a decades-long weakness in government and divisions in wider society.

Gareth Davies, head of the body, said coronavirus had “stress-tested the government’s ability to deal with unforeseen events”.

In its report the NAO said ministers had been left without a "playbook" to respond because of the lack of paper advance planning.

And the watchdog warned that the crisis had “laid bare existing fault lines within society, such as the risk of widening inequalities, and within public service delivery and government itself”.

It comes after former Downing Street chief of staff Dominic Cummings said the government's pandemic planning had been "part disaster, part non-existent" and that the government's tendency to "secrecy contributed greatly to the catastrophe".

Mr Cummings, who is due to appear before MPs next week, said the lack of public scrutiny was still affecting the response to the rise of the new variant from India.

In its report, the NAO said government pandemic communications had sometimes been unclear and were not always timely.

And it also highlighted that guidance on personal protective equipment changed up to to 30 times up to the end of last June, adding to a sense of chaos.

The watchdog also reiterated criticism of the way in which PPE and other contracts had been awarded to suppliers.

The report estimated that the total government extra spend on Covid-related measures amounted to £372bn up to March this year taking into account the full lifetime cost of all policies.

It warned that already struggling local government finances had been "scarred by the pandemic".

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

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

He added that lessons earned were "not only important for the remaining phases of the current pandemic, but should also help better prepare the UK for future emergencies".