Ex-UK health chief blames WHO for Britain’s lack of pandemic planning

LONDON — Britain’s former health secretary said the U.K. would have been more prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic if the government had not been reassured by the World Health Organization (WHO) that its plans were up to scratch.

Speaking at the U.K.’s official inquiry into its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, Hancock said that prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, the U.K. was seen as “one of the best-placed countries in the world for responding to a pandemic. And indeed, in some areas, categorized by the World Health Organization as the best place in the world.”

The former health secretary said “that was quite a significant reassurance that turned out to be wrong,” and said this explained why he focused on other priorities in the U.K.’s health service.

Britain drew up an influenza preparedness plan in 2011, but the government has faced scrutiny over whether it prepared for the right kind of outbreak and whether funding cuts to public health services put a strain on its response.

Hancock — who quit government after breaching COVID rules by kissing an aide — argued that there had been a problem with the “doctrine” in Britain and indeed the “whole Western world” in how to tackle a pandemic, saying that the U.K. had planned for “the consequence of a disaster” rather than trying to halt or mitigate one.

He argued that questions such as “Can we buy enough body bags? Where are we going to bury the dead?” had underpinned the U.K.’s disaster response philosophy, rather than questions of prevention — a stance he branded “completely wrong.”

‘Disorganized Brexit’

Hancock also fielded questions about the heavy toll the pandemic took on Britain’s care homes, which he once promised to place a “protective ring” around. The former health secretary has faced criticism, including from former No. 10 aide Dominic Cummings, about the way people were discharged from hospitals into care homes at the height of the pandemic.

The ex-health secretary stressed that care homes were not his or his department’s direct responsibility — but rather that of local authorities.

“The responsibility for ensuring preparedness in social care formally fell to local authorities, and there was work required of local authorities to put in place pandemic preparedness plans,” he said, claiming that plans put in place by some councils had been “totally inadequate.”

“One of the central challenges in social care is that whilst I have the title secretary of state for health and social care the primary responsibility, legal responsibility, contractual responsibility for social care falls to local councils,” he added.

Hancock also appeared to shift blame when Hugo Keith, lead counsel in the inquiry, asked about the 2016 pandemic preparedness exercise, Exercise Cygnus.

Explaining why a number of the recommendations from that exercise had not been implemented, Hancock said that a “disorganized Brexit” took focus away from the threat of a pandemic.

Concluding the session, Keith said of the U.K.’s response: “Lions led by donkeys, Mr. Hancock. Personally, everyone gave their all, but the system was not fit for purpose.”