Keir Starmer calls for Covid inquiry to be brought FORWARD in wake of scathing report which laid bare No10's catalogue of failures as Labour leader demands Boris Johnson apologises - while Dominic Cummings brands his former boss a 'joke' 

• Sir Keir Starmer today called for the Covid inquiry to be brought forward 'as quickly as possible'
• Dominic Cummings today branded Boris Johnson a 'joke' Prime Minister when interviewed about the report
• Stephen Barclay, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, did not apologise for the handling of the pandemic
• First major inquiry into the Covid crisis says the tragic losses in care homes were among the highest in Europe
• The report finds that deaths could have been prevented but instead elderly were treated as 'an afterthought' 
• Finding is just one among catalogue of failings detailed in the inquiry by the health and science committees
• The report found test and trace system which cost Government £37billion was also branded 'chaotic' fiasco

Keir Starmer today called for the Covid inquiry to be brought forward in the wake of a scathing report that laid bare a string of failures ministers made in handling the pandemic.

The first major probe into the Covid crisis concluded that thousands of care home residents died needlessly in the pandemic, and that ministers were blinded by 'groupthink' among scientific advisers who wrongly wanted to manage the spread of the virus, rather than suppress it.

The dossier also claimed that No10's early decisions on lockdowns and social distancing rank as 'one of the most important public health failures the UK has ever experienced'. 

Speaking on a visit to a lorry driver training centre near Oldham, Labour's leader said: 'I think the least the PM could do is address the families, apologise, and bring forward the public inquiry just as quickly as possible.'

Sir Keir added: 'The PM should take responsibility because the responsibility is his, and he should apologise.

'But I'd like to just start by acknowledging just how difficult a day this will be for the bereaved families learning what they will learn in this report, which is a damning indictment of the Government and the flaws and errors and failures of the Government running down the NHS before the pandemic, being far too slow to respond, with the price being paid by those bereaved families, chaotic track and trace.'

Meanwhile, one of the Government's own ministers today refused to apologise 11 times for the mistakes that had led to thousands of deaths in Britain.

Stephen Barclay, who replaced Michael Gove as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in No10's reshuffle last month, was grilled about the report and repeatedly given the opportunity to say sorry by Sky News presenter Kay Burley, but he instead dodged the chance. He even admitted he had not yet read the 151-page report.

Boris Johnson has promised a formal inquiry into the Government's response to the pandemic will start in Spring 2022 but an exact date has yet to be set. When he announced the probe, he insisted key players would be put 'under the microscope'. 

Labour had originally called for the inquiry to begin in June this year, in line with No10's lifting of virus restrictions. There are currently virtually no Covid curbs on daily life in England. 

Elsewhere, Dominic Cummings today slammed his old boss for his handling of the pandemic, branding the Prime Minister a 'joke'. 

Speaking to Sky News outside his home, the Prime Minister's ex chief adviser labelled No10's system for dealing with crises a 'disaster'. He said: 'The system was bad for many years before Covid. 

'Me and others put into place work to try and improve the system in 2020 after the first wave, unfortunately the Prime Minister – being the joke that he is – has not pushed that work through.' 

Mr Cummings, who has been a vocal critic of Mr and Mrs Johnson since leaving Downing Street, added: 'Now we have a joke Prime Minister and a joke leader of the Labour party, and we obviously need a new political system.'

The report, published today by the health and science committees at the House of Commons, is the first to shine a light on the catalogue of failures made at the top of Government. It castigated the 'chaotic' performance of the £37billion test and trace system. 

Families of coronavirus victims today called report 'laughable', with one campaigner pointing out that it 'barely mentions the over 150,000 bereaved families'. 

She added: 'Sadly, this is what we expected, as the committee explicitly refused to speak to us or any bereaved families, instead insisting they were only interested in speaking to their colleagues and friends.'

Mr Cummings, an Oxford-educated former aide who resigned from Downing Street after losing an internal power struggle, has repeatedly savaged the Prime Minister and his Government.

He unleashed a blizzard of complaints about his old boss during a one-hour chat with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg in July.

During the interview, Mr Cummings attacked Mr Johnson over his fitness to lead, saying he 'doesn't have a plan' for Government, and accused his wife Carrie of 'trying to appoint clowns to key positions', as well as slamming the Covid response. 

The 49-year-old was the director of Vote Leave and is widely seen as the architect of Brexit. 

He was also invited to appear in front of MPs in the summer, delivering a number of bombshells including that tens of thousands had died unnecessarily because of the way Covid was handled, and accusing former Health Secretary Matt Hancock of lying to his colleagues.

Today's report vindicated some of Mr Cummings's criticisms. Giving evidence to politicians in the summer, Mr Cummings argued 'false groupthink' was prevalent in Whitehall.

Mr Cummings' barb came after Mr Barclay was wheeled out this morning to face the media in the wake of the report into the Government's Covid response. 

He said: 'We followed, throughout, the scientific advice. We got the vaccine deployed extremely quickly, we protected our NHS from the surge of cases.'

Asked again by Ms Burley if he would say sorry in the wake of the report, Mr Barclay said: 'Well no, we followed the scientific advice, we protected the NHS, we took the decisions based on the evidence before us.

'But of course, we've always said with something so unprecedented as the pandemic, there will be lessons to learn, we're keen to learn them.'

Ms Burley said later in the interview: 'I don't understand why you don't want to apologise.'

Mr Barclay responded: 'Well, there are lessons to learn but the point is that we took decisions based on the science, we protected the NHS, we got the vaccine deployed at pace but we accept where there are lessons to learn we are keen to do so.'

Ms Burley said: 'But you're representing the Government this morning, and there were 20,000 unnecessary deaths in the UK, many of them elderly people, and you don't want to apologise?'

He responded: 'What I'm saying is we took decisions based on the scientific evidence we were presented with.'

During the interview, Mr Barclay admitted: 'The report that you're talking about came out at midnight, I have not had an opportunity to read it yet.' 

Also asked for an apology by LBC radio today, Mr Barclay said: 'Well I recognise it's devastating and my heart goes out to any family, any of your listeners where they lost a loved one.'

Families who lost loved ones to the virus have slammed the report for saying the vaccine rollout — which has jabbed more than nine in ten adults — had 'redeemed' many failures at the start of the crisis. 

Hannah Brady, spokeswoman for the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group, said in a statement: 'What a surprise: a committee led by the previous health secretary and which exclusively spoke to his friends in Government, found that the deaths of 150,000 people were 'redeemed' by the vaccine rollout.'

She added that the report 'barely mentions' the tens of thousands of families that lost loved ones to the virus. 

Ms Brady said: 'The report it's produced is laughable, and more interested in political arguments about whether you can bring laptops to Cobra meetings than it is in the experiences of those who tragically lost parents, partners or children to Covid.

'This is an attempt to ignore and gaslight bereaved families, who will see it as a slap in the face.'

Ms Brady said the report proved that a judge-led independent inquiry, which has been promised by the Government in spring, 'must have bereaved families at its heart'.

She added: 'That is the only way that the serious questions, like why families were told their loved ones were not fit for intensive care without medical assessment, or advised by 111 to keep their loved ones at home even in their dying moments, or why there were even more deaths in care homes in the second wave than the first, will be answered.'

Dr David Nabarro, the special envoy for Covid at the World Health Organization (WHO), said that delayed action at the start of the pandemic led to 'suffering'.

He told Sky News: 'What we're learning is when you get a virus, starting to really spread in a community, the one thing that you must not do is to delay – it doesn't help anybody.

'And occasionally people think: 'Well if we delay, everybody will get infected. So the problem will go away, because they'll all be immune.' That also doesn't work.

'So I think what we have to remember is: be rapid and be firm as soon as you get cases of the disease.

'It doesn't mean you have complete lockdown, it just means you need to be able to test and to isolate and to stop spread.'

He added: 'If you delay, what we're learning all over the world, is that people suffer.'

On Test and Trace, he added: 'What we have learned in Britain, and in many other countries, is you can't just tell people to isolate and expect them to stay at home without any kind of financial compensation.'

Dr Nabarro also called on other countries to start investigating their response to the pandemic, to ensure that 'lessons can be learned'. He said he hoped every country would open an inquiry. 

Some 8.1million Britons have tested positive for the virus since the pandemic began — with thousands more cases likely undiagnosed due to a shortage of tests in the first half of last year.

More than 137,000 Covid deaths within 28 days of being diagnosed with the virus have also been recorded, with the bulk happening during the second wave in January. There have been more than 150,000 death certificates that mention the virus.

The UK has the eighth highest Covid death toll in the world, and the highest in Europe.

The US (714,055 Covid deaths), Brazil (601,213), India (450,963), Mexico (282,227), Russia (213,522), Peru (199,703) and Indonesia (142,716) are the only countries to have recorded more fatalities. 

Mr Johnson said earlier this year that he took 'full responsibility for everything that has happened'.

The Prime Minister added he was 'truly sorry for the suffering the people of this country have experienced'.

He has also promised to open a full inquiry into ministers' handling of the pandemic. 

Layla Moran MP, who chairs the All-Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus, said today: 'This report is no substitute for the full public inquiry this Government has promised.

'The Government must now commit to releasing interim findings from this inquiry before the next general election.' 

Jeremy Hunt and Greg Clark, the Tory MPs who chair the two committees, said that while the vaccine drive had been 'boldly planned and effectively executed' there were also 'big mistakes'.

One was that hospitals discharged patients into care homes without testing them for the virus because officials were focused on 'protecting the NHS'.

The report describes Covid as a 'scourge of the elderly' and says over-80s were 70 times more likely to die than those aged under 40. Yet in the first month of lockdown around 25,000 patients were discharged into care homes without being checked for Covid.

This had the devastating impact of 'seeding' the disease among the vulnerable. Almost one in four people who died from Covid lived in a care home, with 41,675 residents succumbing to the virus up until this May.

The report notes: 'The UK was not alone in suffering significant loss of life in care homes, but the tragic scale of loss was among the worst in Europe and could have been mitigated.'

This rapid discharge of people from hospitals into care homes 'led to many thousands of deaths which could have been avoided'.

The inquiry also says Covid-19 exposed decades of underfunding and neglect of the entire social care system.

Extending to 151 pages, the report draws on evidence from former health secretary Matt Hancock, chief scientist Sir Patrick Vallance and chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty.

It makes 38 recommendations. The delay in imposing the first lockdown stemmed from flawed advice from scientific advisers, the report finds. Ministers felt 'unable to challenge' members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies even as it became clear a catastrophe was unfolding.

The UK's response was also 'severely hampered' by the 'slow, uncertain, and often chaotic performance' of the test, trace and isolate system.

This was partly because NHS Test and Trace was established only when daily infections had risen to 2,000, with the result that it 'ultimately failed in its stated objective to prevent future lockdowns despite vast quantities of taxpayers' money being directed to it'.

Test and Trace was set up in May last year with a budget of £22billion. Since then it has been allocated £15billion more – £37billion over two years.

MPs brand the decision to stop community testing in March 2020 a 'serious mistake' and a 'seminal failure' because it meant officials were no longer able to track the spread of the virus.

However, the report notes that the UK 'outperformed' other countries with the development and rollout of vaccines and trials of treatments.

Caroline Abrahams of the charity Age UK said: 'Social care was something of an afterthought during the early terrifying months of Covid.

'Tens of thousands died as a result, leaving their families wondering whether their loved ones could have been saved if we had been better prepared as a nation, and more savvy in government about the role and capability of this vital public service.'

Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the British Medical Association, criticised ministers for delays while the virus was 'spiralling out of control'.

Jonathan Ashworth, Labour's health spokesman, described the errors as 'monumental', adding: 'At every step ministers ignored warnings, responded with complacency and were too slow to act.' 

A Government spokesman said: 'Throughout the pandemic we have been guided by scientific and medical experts and we never shied away from taking quick and decisive action to save lives and protect our NHS, including introducing restrictions and lockdowns.

'We are committed to learning lessons from the pandemic and have committed to holding a full public inquiry in spring.' 

Report blasts ministers for failing to lockdown sooner after following flawed advice

By Eleanor Hayward for the Daily Mail 

Ministers failed to challenge flawed advice from Government scientists which allowed Covid to rip through Britain, the damning inquiry concluded.

Today's report said the UK's failure to lock down early enough stemmed from 'false groupthink' among members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).

In a devastating verdict, the report insisted the deadly delay in imposing the first national lockdown was 'because of the official scientific advice the Government received, not in spite of it'.

It added that an 'over-reliance on specific mathematical models' – many of which were later proved to be wildly inaccurate – was a key factor in the UK's disastrous response to Covid.

In the early days of the pandemic Boris Johnson consistently stuck to the mantra that his Government was 'following the science'.

However, the inquiry suggests much of this early advice from Sage was wrong – but ministers 'felt it was difficult to challenge the views of their official scientific advisers'.

On March 12, 2020, chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance told a Government news conference it was not possible or desirable to stop everyone being infected.

And at a Sage meeting the next day – ten days before lockdown – members were 'unanimous that measures seeking to completely suppress spread of Covid-19 will cause a second peak'.

The report said: 'Modelling at the time suggested that to suppress the spread of Covid-19 too firmly would cause a resurgence when restrictions were lifted.'

It criticised a 'degree of groupthink' which meant that 'during this period Government policy did not deviate from the scientific advice it received in any material respect'.

The report said that in the days leading up to the first lockdown ministers and advisers 'experienced simultaneous epiphanies that the course the UK was following was wrong, possibly catastrophically so.'

Sage only recommended a full lockdown when a study led by Professor Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College London, said an unmitigated epidemic could result in 510,000 UK deaths.

MPs said it was 'astonishing' this had taken so long when most other nations had already imposed stay-at-home orders.

The report also criticised Sage for promoting the idea it would be difficult to persuade Britons to stay at home, noting: 'It transpired that the UK public were very compliant with the eventual lockdown measures.'

Both former chief aide to the PM, Dominic Cummings, and ex-health secretary Matt Hancock told the inquiry they felt unable to challenge a 'scientific consensus' as it became clear a catastrophe was unfolding.

Mr Hancock said: 'I bitterly regret that I did not over-rule that scientific advice at the start.' The report stressed: 'Science proceeds through challenge and disputation...Yet ministers and other advisers reported that they felt it difficult to challenge the views of their official scientific advisers.

'Those in Government have a duty to question and probe the assumptions behind any scientific advice given, particularly in a national emergency, but there is little evidence sufficient challenge took place.'

The MPs on the committee were also highly critical of the mathematical models produced by members of Sage. The inquiry said evidence suggests 'mathematical modelling was playing too influential a role in UK scientific advice' as the models came with significant limitations and often failed to take into account real-world observations.

The report noted: 'Despite this, throughout the pandemic, detailed modelled projections have evidently had great influence on Government decisions.'

Since the pandemic began, members of Sage have been under fire for gloomy predictions which were later proved wrong.

Only last month, they published modelling suggesting there could be between up to 7,000 hospital admissions a day in mid-October. In reality, daily admissions are currently averaging just 736.

Other prominent members of Sage, including Professor Ferguson, also claimed that cases could reach 200,000 a day over summer when cases actually peaked at around 50,000.

Criticising the 'groupthink' among members of Sage, the report noted that all but one of the 87 members are from UK institutions.

It said: 'For a virus that has affected every country in the world and which was experienced first by other countries, it is also right to consider whether our scientific advisory bodies are sufficiently international.'

Yesterday Sir Patrick defended his actions, telling BBC Radio 4: 'Science informs – it doesn't decide and it doesn't lead the way.'

UK played leading role in saving lives

ByShaun Woollerand Eleanor Hayward For The Daily Mail 

Britain led the world on vaccine development and medical research throughout the pandemic – saving millions of lives globally, the report concluded.

MPs said the jab vaccine programme was 'one of the most stunning scientific achievements in history' and that it 'redeemed' many of the UK's other policy failings.

They praised the 'boldly planned and effectively executed' project that meant Britain was the first Western country to roll out a vaccine against Covid-19.

The report said it was a 'masterstroke' to bring in Dame Kate Bingham, a venture capitalist, as head of the newly-established Vaccine Taskforce in May 2020.

It said the Government quickly 'identified that a vaccine would be the route out of the pandemic' and invested heavily in development, providing £20million to fully fund clinical trials of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

The report praised an 'aggressive' approach that meant the UK had secured agreements for more than 300million vaccine doses by November last year.

It said the UK's medical regulator adopted an 'agile and innovative' approach of constantly reviewing trial data so vaccines could be deployed as soon as possible.

This meant Britain was the first Western country to approve a vaccine and, on December 8 last year, 91-year-old Margaret Keenan, from Coventry, became the first person in the world to receive a Covid-19 jab outside of a clinical trial.

The report concluded: 'The UK vaccination programme – from discovery of potential vaccines against Covid-19 to the vaccination of nearly 80 per cent of the adult population by 1 September 2021 – has been one of the most successful and effective initiatives in the history of UK science and public administration.

'Millions of lives will ultimately be saved as a result of the global vaccine effort, in which the UK has played a leading part.

'In the UK alone, the successful deployment of effective vaccines has allowed, as at September 2021, a resumption of much of normal life, with incalculable benefits to people's lives.'

The MPs also praise the 'decisive and courageous' decision taken by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to extend the gap between doses to 12 weeks.

This allowed the 15million most vulnerable adults to receive their first dose by February 15.

The NHS mass vaccine rollout was hugely successful and outshone the efforts of almost all other nations, the report said.

It also praised British scientists for 'outperforming' other countries in finding treatments for virus victims.

In particular, the RECOVERY trial, led by Oxford University, identified dexamethasone as the first effective treatment for Covid-19 – saving millions of lives around the world.

Meanwhile an antibody treatment developed by AstraZeneca has shown its ability to both prevent and treat Covid-19.

The firm submitted a request to the US Food and Drug Administration last week for emergency use authorisation for AZD7442.

Data released yesterday by AstraZeneca showed it was effective in preventing severe disease in non-hospitalised patients with mild to moderate coronavirus, when compared with a placebo.

Most of the 903 people in the study were at high risk of progression to severe Covid-19.

Hugh Montgomery, professor of intensive care medicine at University College London, and lead researcher on the trial, said AZD7442 could play an important role in the pandemic.