Amid all the failures of the UK’s coronavirus response, let’s not ignore the successes

Some things, quite a lot of things in fact, have gone right. We are just not hearing about them, writes Mary Dejevsky

A woman relaxes in the hot weather on Clapham Common (PA)

Whatever measure you use, the UK’s response to the coronavirus is hardly burnishing the country’s reputation for top-class anything. The UK has one of the highest numbers of deaths in absolute numbers, more than 37,000. Current calculations of deaths per million of the population place the UK behind only Belgium and Spain, and new figures for “excess” deaths per million, produced by the Financial Times, show the UK, with 891, easily heading the list.

This is not a good record. Nor is the infection rate, or the scramble for essential equipment early on, the lack of testing capacity or the way in which the virus was able to penetrate so many care homes, despite the guarantee of a “protective ring” and strict instructions on “shielding” elderly and vulnerable people. Whatever the findings of future inquiries, the 2020 pandemic has not been this country’s finest hour.

One brighter spot might be that the intensive care system held up. Preventing the chaotic scenes and dire choices witnessed in Italy and Spain was a prime government objective – “Protect the NHS” – and this was achieved by dint of some imaginative improvisation and logistics support from the army. Beyond this – which is not nothing – the final balance looks more likely to be negative than positive.

Outside the immediate health sector, however, the balance might look somewhat different. Some things, quite a lot of things in fact, have gone right. We are just not hearing about them. This is partly because the political and media focus is so narrowly on the pandemic and the media tend to home in on bad news. But it is also because next to none of the usual complainants are in fact complaining.

Now I realise that singling out some of the positives at this stage risks giving a big hostage to fortune. But credit where credit is due: the silence from some usually vocal quarters is the silence of something like success.

Some of the earliest government decisions were right ones. Keeping schools open for the children of “key workers” and disadvantaged pupils was one. It is not the government’s fault that the take-up seems to have been so relatively low – a BBC Newsnight report a few weeks ago suggested that fewer than 10 per cent of those eligible were attending – and perhaps more could have been done to encourage attendance. More positive publicity for the scheme might also have wonders for the reputation of teachers whose apparent reluctance to return next week is not doing the profession any favours.

Another was the choice of shops that could stay open: not just pharmacies and supermarkets, but corner shops and... off-licences. It is not hard to imagine the objections there might have been to this decision in ministerial discussion. With pubs and other hostelries closed, however, this provided a safety valve. It meant that what could have been angry and hard-to-control scenes outside supermarkets were largely avoided. You can deplore the nation’s level of alcohol dependence if you like – either in normal or exceptional times – but keeping off-licences open was a wise move.

Other practical decisions, some dependent on central government, some on local authorities, have also been admirably far-sighted. The din from a spate of roadworks and cable-laying grates my nerves every day. But it is a sensible, and surprisingly nimble, move to accelerate such work at a time when the roads are almost empty. The same goes for motorway and railway work, which has in the recent past led to the closure of whole routes for weeks on end. It would be good to think that this orgy of maintenance would perhaps free us from holiday closures in future, but that might be an ambition too far.

And while the decision by so many local authorities to close rubbish tips must be seen as a mistake – it predictably led to rampant fly-tipping – the continuation of refuse collections uninterrupted has raised the appreciation of bin men and women no end. In Westminster, the council also switched some capacity from (deserted) tourist quarters to residential areas. The risk (for the council) is that we will take a dim view of any reversion to “normal”.

It has been an immutable rule for decades that anything that mixes government and money and technology will go wrong, probably in a big and expensive way. Yet some of the government’s crisis decisions that have worked best (so far) are in the very areas where, given past performance, public expectations were probably the lowest. Not only this, but they were huge decisions, affecting many millions of people.

The much-vilified system of universal credit – whose rollout was delayed so often as to fuel doubts about whether it would ever happen – has stood up to a sudden 40 per cent rise in demand with barely a glitch. It is currently registering a 74 per cent approval rating from users, with nine out of 10 requests for help being met on time and in full. Speaking at the Resolution Foundation think tank this week, Neil Couling – who is responsible to parliament for universal credit and came across as an unusually down-to-earth civil servant – said that this was largely down to automation; it appears also to have been a mammoth task of organisation.

Similar plaudits might go to the Treasury’s loan, grant and furlough schemes. The cost is stratospheric and the bill will come in. But these government advances have fended off a potentially catastrophic collapse in consumption, not to speak of evictions, repossessions and destitution. What is more, HMRC – HMRC, for heaven’s sake – appears to have provided in most cases a stellar service. I was so frustrated with HMRC a few years ago that I asked my MP for help. In the past two weeks, I have heard callers to phone-ins practically in tears, not of frustration, but of gratitude at the simplicity and efficiency of the service. This is truly astonishing and has to be worth a few gongs when the delayed honours’ list appears.

Let’s hear it for prisons, too. How many warnings were given, as the pandemic advanced, that prisons were a natural breeding ground for the virus? Well, the worst has mostly not happened. According to Mark Fairhurst, the head of the Prison Officers’ Association, in an LBC interview this week, a combination of improved officer-prisoner ratios, prisoners’ own survival instincts and changes of regime have kept prisons largely virus-free. Unlike, it might be said bitterly, many care homes.

Among other plusses might be the number of homeless people and rough sleepers who have been found accommodation – though the real gauge of success here will be how many return to the streets. Last, but not least, should be mentioned the number of people who volunteered to help, through formal and informal channels. Some will be disappointed that their services were not needed – by the NHS or the local council or whatever – but the extent of informal assistance provided by people looking out for and shopping or cooking for their neighbours has shown a different face of our supposedly hard-scrabble big cities.

What can be taken from this? A general conclusion might be that the pandemic has shown parts of the state – including extreme crisis planning, Work and Pensions (universal credit) and HMRC – able to switch rapidly into emergency mode and work surprisingly well. Did they learn, finally, from past mistakes? What might be termed “civil society” also appears to be in much better shape than all the talk about division and inequality would suggest. Maybe it is just bad luck or maybe it is because this is where, for obvious reasons, the spotlight has fallen, but it is unfortunate that it is aspects of our health and care sectors that the pandemic has exposed as our weakest links. If nothing else, it illustrates very clearly where change needs to happen next.