Martin Kettle’s piece, in quoting the evidence of the former deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara to the Covid inquiry, recirculates the narrative that the British state had no contingency planning for a pandemic caused by a respiratory virus (The Covid inquiry has exposed more than just a few bad apples – the whole system is rotten, 2 November).
In 2005-07, I was a small cog in the process that produced plans which were implemented in the 2009 swine flu pandemic. That response was generally endorsed by Dame Deirdre Hine’s review in 2010. There were repeated desktop exercises throughout the decade, with the last in 2016. This identified various weaknesses and the need for a civil service workstream to update the planning. This did not progress because of the diversion of resources to work on Brexit. However, the New and Emerging Respiratory Viruses Threats Advisory Group was created to carry out horizon-scanning, and the Moral and Ethical Advisory Group was set up as a standing resource for ethical advice to policymakers. I had the privilege of serving on both.
The core problem in early 2020 was not a lack of planning, but a lack of organisational memory that plans existed, coupled with a thinning out of central and local government emergency teams and the distractions of Brexit. “Move fast and break things” is not a recipe for good government.
Prof Robert Dingwall
Nottingham
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