Failure to protect: who is to blame for Britain's coronavirus crisis?
The UK’s Covid-19 crisis has reached the blame phase, with Boris Johnson, ministers, civil servants and scientists coming under criticism that they underestimated the threat, were slow to act and are bungling the country’s response amid a wave of deaths.
So who is in the line of fire – and why?
Boris Johnson
Before he became prime minister, Johnson was accused of being too casual and not having a grip on detail, particularly when he was foreign secretary. This week it emerged he had failed to attend five high security Cobra meetings during January and February that were held to prepare for a possible pandemic. The allegation was published by the Sunday Times and later confirmed by Michael Gove. During this period, Johnson went on country breaks with his pregnant fiancee – fuelling concerns that he hadn’t take the threat seriously enough at an early stage.
Those fears hardened after it emerged that on 3 February, he claimed the UK was ready to be a free trade “superhero” fighting against those who wished to put up trade barriers to stop diseases such as coronavirus. Stung by the claims, the government issued a long defence of Johnson’s handling of the crisis and said the Sunday Times was guilty of “a series of falsehoods and errors”. Gove said it was not unusual for other ministers to chair Cobra meetings.
Matt Hancock, health secretary
No other minster has been under more pressure than Hancock, who has been accused of boasting too much, and delivering too little – particularly on testing the delivery of personal protective equipment (PPE) to frontline NHS workers.
His commitment to roll out 100,000 tests a day by the end of April looked overly ambitious when he made it earlier this month – and with only a week to go, the target looks unreachable.
Although the UK has the capacity to do around 40,000 a day – the actual number of tests undertaken stood at 18,206 on Tuesday.
The boast will also “come back to bite him” according to one Downing Street insider who was quoted in the
Daily Telegraph.
Ventilator procurement has also been another high-profile issue for Hancock. He has said the UK needs 18,000 machines – but so far, there are only 10,700 in action. Critics say he has focused on big name brands such as Dyson producing them from scratch, rather than helping pre-existing British ventilator manufacturers increase supply.
On 3 April he boasted of firms making PPE domestically and gave a “shout out to Burberry” for their offer to help. Weeks later Hancock admitted they were “tight on gowns”, and British companies have repeatedly complained that their approaches to government have not been taken up, with reports on Monday of some firms sending shipments of equipment abroad.
Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, and Chris Whitty, chief medical officer
Both won high praise for their calm handling of the crisis during its early days, but their roles have come under increased scrutiny – not least because ministers keep insisting they have taken decisions based on the advice that they are being given by them.
Critics of the government will say ministers cannot duck responsibility for taking key decisions – but there is undoubtedly huge pressure on Vallance, Whitty and the teams around them.
The concept of herd immunity was first raised publicly by Vallance on 13 March with a comment that it could be an “important part of controlling [coronavirus] longer term”. His remark sparked alarm among the public as the UK continued to allow mass gatherings, while European neighbours were banning sports fixtures and closing schools.
The phrase was quickly shot down by Hancock who said it was not a “goal or a strategy” of the government. A few days later, a scientific report was released by Imperial College London’s Covid-19 response team that stated that without urgent and aggressive suppression measures, up to 250,000 people could die.
Whitty has already conceded Germany “got ahead” in testing people for Covid-19 and said the UK needed to learn from that as it races to set up diagnostic facilities from scratch.
Sir Mark Sedwill and the civil service
The cabinet secretary’s role at the centre of government is pivotal – Sedwill is the national security adviser, head of the civil service and it fell to him to tell the cabinet that Johnson had been taken into intensive care. It has made him a target of sniping from unnamed government aides over a number of weeks.
Sources have claimed in the Times and the Sunday Times that he failed to get a grip on the coronavirus crisis in February; one, quoted in the Financial Times, even claimed that he had fallen out with Johnson and his aides over the response to the virus.
Cabinet Office insiders have hit back, calling the claims “shit-stirring” and a move towards blaming civil servants who cannot speak out. Sedwill, who has enemies among Johnson’s advisers and in the cabinet, is unlikely to accept any attempt to shift the blame without a fight.
China
In the wake of Donald Trump’s at