Transcript

The Covid Inquiry - special episode

From The BMJ · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 31 min · 5,424 words · 60 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "The Covid Inquiry - special episode", an episode of The BMJ published December 14, 2025 (31 min, about 5,424 words). It mentions 14 people, works and ideas, including Baroness Hallet, COVID-19 pandemic, Boris Johnson, Kevin Fong, BMJ.

What this episode is about

The inquiry led by Baroness Hallett examines the UK government's decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on its governance and preparedness. The recent report highlights key findings from the second module of the investigation, revealing the considerable costs involved and the implementation of several recommendations aimed at improving future pandemic response efforts.

Key takeaways

  • A £200 million inquiry to dissect a pandemic, but it took two years to get started—talk about slow diagnostics!
  • ‘Too little, too late’—the phrase echoes both in the inquiry findings and in memories of lockdown frustrations.
  • Hindsight is 20/20, but can we blame Brexit for pandemic mismanagement? A toxic mix of crises is hard to untangle.
  • While the UK struggles with an exhaustive inquiry, Sweden wrapped theirs up in 2022—could we learn from their swiftness?
  • With thousands of lives possibly saved by quicker actions, the inquiry raises a haunting question: what if foresight had prevailed?

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: COVID-19 pandemic, Boris Johnson, BMJ, Rebecca Kums
  2. – 10:00: Baroness Hallet, COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit
  3. – 15:00: Boris Johnson, Baroness Hallet
  4. – 20:00: Kevin Fong
  5. – 25:00: Brexit, Boris Johnson, Martin McKee, SAGE
  6. – 30:00: Baroness Hallet
  7. – 31:05: BMJ, Cameron Abassi

Notable quotes from "The Covid Inquiry - special episode"

  • Baris Hallet who is leading the UK co inquiry has just published her second report which focuses on the government's decision making during the pandemic and to dissect that…
    about COVID-19 pandemic · at
  • Yeah. So, I mean this latest module has been very critical of Boris Johnson that's got all the headlines. It's been very damning and you know the unforgivable failures. I think we all.
    about Boris Johnson · at
  • System wasn't as prepared as it might have been was because of Brexit. is Brexit had such a big impact on Whiteall, draining staff looking at Brexit transfer recovery policies that in many ways many of the normal precautionary.
    about Brexit · at
  • And she also says, Baroness Hallet also says in her report that the lessons of the first wave were not learned and were repeated over and over again throughout the whole piece. And so too little too.
    about Baroness Hallet · at
  • I think there are two main issues here. one is the science and advisory structures need to be far more robust and put in place and the government needs to have much clearer objectives and an understanding of what those.
    about SAGE · at
  • I The report talks about the way in which Sage would be asked questions without necessarily knowing why they were being asked those questions and then when they gave the answers they.
    about Martin McKee · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Baroness Hallet — Person · Referenced authority (Inquiry chair/report author) · 4 mentions · first at
    Chair of the UK COVID-19 Inquiry; her Module 2 report and its language ('too little, too late', 'toxic culture') anchors the episode’s analysis of UK pandemic decision-making.
  • Boris Johnson — Person · Referenced political decision-maker (subject of criticism) · 6 mentions · first at
    As UK Prime Minister during key phases of COVID-19, he is discussed as central to leadership, trust, and decision-making failures highlighted by the inquiry and panelists.
  • Kevin Fong — Person · Main guest (clinical and systems perspective) · 2 mentions · first at
    Provides frontline and systems-thinking analysis of pandemic response, learning failures, NHS capacity constraints, and the practical meaning of 'too little, too late' across waves.
    BMJ's head of journalism hello and Kevin Fong anesist and lead for major incident planning at University College Hospital.
  • Cameron Abassi — Person · Host · 2 mentions · first at
    Hosts the BMJ Medicine and Science podcast episode, frames the discussion, and questions guests about the inquiry findings and implications for learning and systems change.
    Report which focuses on the government's decision making during the pandemic and to dissect that with us I'm joined in the studio by Rebecca Kums who's the BMJ's head of journalism hello and Kevin Fong anesist and lead for.
  • Matthew Flinders — Person · Main guest (politics/governance analyst) · 1 mention · first at
    Interprets the inquiry’s tone and findings through governance lenses: hindsight bias, Whitehall culture, institutional memory, trust, and structural barriers to systemic change.
    Well, I was quite surprised how strong it was with its core message about too little too late. In many ways, it underlined a lot of the concerns and issues that were fairly wellnown, but of.
  • Rebecca Kums — Person · Co-host / panelist (journalism lead summarizing inquiry) · 2 mentions · first at
    Provides the episode’s overview of the UK COVID-19 Inquiry structure, costs, module scope, and headline findings (e.g., earlier lockdown could have saved lives).
    Yeah. I mean the report obviously looks at the toxic culture in Downing Street at lower levels. there also some criticisms the scient scientists and medics involved in some of the.
  • Martin McKee — Person · Referenced expert (recorded clip contributor) · 1 mention · first at
    Cited for critique of how scientific advice (SAGE) was commissioned/used, and for Brexit-related impacts on preparedness and international learning; positioned as an expert voice via a recorded segment.

Companies & orgs

  • BMJ — Company · Host · 3 mentions · first at
    Publisher of the podcast and involved in early calls for a pandemic inquiry.
    Welcome to a special edition of the Medicine and Science podcast from the BMJ. I'm Cameron Abassi, editor-inchief.
  • Institute of Fiscal Studies — Company · Referenced expert · 2 mentions
    Provided cost estimates for the COVID-19 inquiry, highlighting the financial scale.
  • University College Hospital — Company · Affiliation · 1 mention · first at
    Employer of Kevin Fong, providing context to his expertise in incident planning.
    BMJ's head of journalism hello and Kevin Fong anesist and lead for major incident planning at University College Hospital.
  • University of Sheffield — Company · Affiliation · 1 mention · first at
    Employer of Matthew Flenders, adding credibility to his political and policy expertise.
    On I guess at some point in the next few months. We're also joined online by Matthew Flenders. Matthew is professor of politics and public policy at the University of Sheffield.

Concepts & topics

  • Brexit — Concept · Key argument · 3 mentions · first at
    Discussed as a factor that impacted the UK's preparedness and response to the pandemic.
  • SAGE — Concept · Strategy · 1 mention · first at
    Scientific advisory group for emergencies, criticized for its interaction with the government.

Places & events

  • COVID-19 pandemic — Event · Core topic · 3 mentions · first at
    Central theme of the episode, discussing the UK government's handling and the inquiry's findings.

Full transcript with timestamps

Welcome to a special edition of the Medicine and Science podcast from the BMJ. I'm Cameron Abassi, editor-inchief. Baris Hallet who is leading the UK co inquiry has just published her second report which focuses on the government's decision making during the pandemic and to dissect that uh with us I'm joined in the studio by Rebecca Kums who's the BMJ's head of journalism

hello and Kevin Fong anesist and lead for major incident planning at University College Hospital.

Hello. Kevin gave moving testimony as many of us will remember to the inquiry not for this module but for the next module that we'll be hearing a verdict on I guess at some point in the next few months. We're also joined online by Matthew Flenders. Matthew is professor of politics and public policy at the University of Sheffield.

Good afternoon. So let's start with Beex. Beex um bring us up to date with an overview of what the inquiry found this week.

Yeah, I mean just a bit of context as well for the for the inquiry. So you Boris Johnson um announced this and under extreme pressure in 2021. Um as you say it's being led by this um former senior appeals judge Baroness Hallet who's also a member of the House of Lords and it's a massive undertaking. It's split into 10 modules each looking at a different area of impact and the one that's just reported is module two

and that's looking at decision- making and political governance. Um and the report from the first module looked at p pandemic preparedness uh and it was widely seen as actually quite helpful and several of its recommendations such as uh regular pandemic simulation exercises are you know have already been adapted. Um hearings have been happening since 2023 and they're ongoing. um it's costing a huge amount of money. Um uh the Institute of Fis fiscal studies estimates that it's going to cost over200 million pounds and and that doesn't include the amount that Whiteall spending on lawyers. Um the FT estimated around about 8 million so far on lawyers. So, you know, we want this to be really indepth in its investigations and and sort of, you know, transformative in its recommendations. I think we've got a right to expect that.

Yeah. I mean, everybody's been calling for it. I remember we first called for an inquiry in July 2020, but a rapid one.

Yeah, we finally got one, an independent inquiry. Yeah. I mean, important to know though that other countries are making swifter progress. So, uh, Sweden's independent commission published its final report on the government's handling of the crisis in February 2022

and the Netherlands October 2023. Um, I we're we're not going to see an end to this till about 2027. Uh, I mean, maybe that's a good thing. Maybe that's for discussion. Um,

why is ours taking so long? I guess you got to answer that. I don't think we've ever attempted a public inquiry like this before. It's so broad in its scope.

Um, yeah, that's all I know. I mean, say 10 modules as you said that other ones coming up are the impact of COVID 19 pandemic on healthare systems, uh, looking at vaccines and therapeutics, children. Uh, they're all very important areas. Okay. Are you able to quickly summarize what was announced this week?

Yeah. So, I mean this latest module has been very critical of Boris Johnson that's got all the headlines. It's been very damning and you know the unforgivable failures. I think we all know the headlines that UK action was too little too late that um 23,000 lives could have been saved is the is the headline if lockdown have been imposed a week earlier and and you know if if restrictions such as contact tracing, selfisolation, household quarantine, face coverings, respiratory hygiene, you know, could have been introduced earlier, uh we could have avoided a full lockdown.

Okay. Well, let's get a reaction from Kevin and Matthew. So [snorts] Matthew, what did you make of the U verdict from Lady Howlet this week?

Well, I was quite surprised how strong it was with its its core message about too little too late. In many ways, it underlined a lot of the concerns and issues that were fairly wellnown, but of course gave us an evidence base and an insight to a level that we didn't quite have previously. And of course all of this and this is the great issue the the the danger of hindsight bias that in many ways it's very easy for an independent judicial inquiry to look back and try and understand what went wrong but to capture the nature of decision-m at a very particular po moment in time when there are intense pressures imperfect information going on that is something that's very hard I think sometimes for inquiries to capture and although I think this inquiry is doing a fantastic job. I think that hindsight bias of not imposing an incredibly rational view on how policy should be made to what is often a messy

reality of life. Okay. First of all, can I just pick you up on you said you you were surprised that it was a bit strong to say too little too late. Why do you say that? Then I'll come back to the point about hindsight bias. Well, I think the point about too little too late is that there were obviously a whole number of different um uh debates, issues, concerns. It was a um a fairly new challenge. Um the system clearly wasn't uh prepared as it should have been. And one of the things that's quite interesting particularly in the summary report is one of the reasons why the system wasn't as prepared as it might have been was because of Brexit. is Brexit had had such a big impact on Whiteall, draining staff looking at Brexit transfer recovery policies that in many ways many of the normal precautionary um strategies had been temporarily overlooked. The reason I think it's interesting and goes quite far is some

of the comments about the toxic culture at the heart of Whiteall. um maybe possibly a language that we wouldn't have expected to have been used but quite clearly dovetail with what was broadly known about some of the key actors at the time and about more broadly a a rather amateur-ish approach to governing at the center of power.

So you're saying that are you agreeing that there was a toxic culture? So if there was one why shouldn't she say that? Well, I think there was a a toxic culture and I would say there were obviously uh lots of officials and experts trying to uh work the system as as as well as could have been done in the in the context. Uh I'm just thinking that having read a lot of uh judicial inquiries, the language and tone is uh is slightly stronger than I would have expected.

Okay. Yes, it's pretty pretty full on pretty direct. On the point of hindsight bias, uh I mean Kevin might want to comment on this, but I I mean in the BMJ we published a whole bunch of articles around the unfolding pandemic and there was one that I co-authored in May of 2020 and the strap line to that piece was uh in relation to the UK's response, too little, too late, too flawed. Um and I know the Lancet had something similar and as as they say the pandemic went through its various stages I would argue actually that it's not hindsight bias.

There was a lot of commentary a lot of analysis a lot a lot of very uh rigorous viewpoints and vigorously put viewpoints that were saying that the government is getting this wrong. So actually I wouldn't agree with you on that point Kevin. What's your view of that? So, so I actually I have sympathy for the idea of of you know the the run into March 2020, February March 2020 there there was a big cloud of uncertainty. I I do remember that and so in a way one has to think quite carefully about what decisions could and couldn't be made with full clarity. That said, the too little too late statement I think applies across the whole of the piece.

And she also says, Baroness Hallet also says in her report that the lessons of the first wave were not learned and were repeated over and over again throughout the whole piece. And so too little too late certainly absolutely applies to the uh the lockdown restrictions that are required on January the 4th, 2021 because by that time you've got a full set of surveillance and data and monitoring up. You've got a very mature set of advisory groups and yet you still lumber into that one with much more catastrophic consequences than the decisions that were made in the first wave.

Yeah. Um can I just pick up on the toxic culture point, Beex? I mean what what was your view of that? Did you look into that?

Yeah. I mean the report obviously looks at the toxic culture in Downing Street um at lower levels. Uh there also some criticisms uh the scient scientists and medics involved in in some of the decisions. Yeah.

Um I think the allegations of rule breaking um by ministers and advisers also sort of undermine confidence in the government at the time.

Well, that came out slightly later. Um there also seems to be like a lack of trust between Johnson and the other devolved governments

uh which also didn't help and sort of you know affected that kind of collaborative approach and decision-m.

Okay. Okay. Um, I mean, you might want to come back on this, Matthew, but let me just ask Kevin a little bit. I mean, Kevin, you you talked about how this was too little, the too little too late phrase could be applied kind of throughout. Do you want to talk a little bit more about what about that? What are the other examples of that? Well, well, the point about a response like this that even though it starts with this huge dense cloud of uncertainty and all of the criticisms one can make or at least all of the comments one can make about how difficult it is to to assemble the whole picture as as it kicks off at the start of 2020. That's not true.

That's not true later as we head into the autumn. And in fact, I I always think of that time as almost the sweet spot for everything because we have, you know, two variants in play. We have no vaccinations on the pitch. Most of the population hasn't been infected. Our mathematical modeling is as mature as it's going to be for purpose at that time. And so it's never at any point in the pandemic, I think, more obvious what is about to happen. And yet we we do just blunder into it. And uh and I think that cost us very sorely. And so even if one says it's strong language for the first set of decisions, it absolutely isn't for that point there. And and Baroness Hallet makes the point that this is a government that fails to learn and and that's that in itself is the lesson to take away that if you don't learn as you're in progress. If you don't defer to the expertise that is in the room, then you will repeat your

mistakes and it will cost you. Okay, I'd like to come back to this learning point, but Matthew, I want to bring you in. I was speaking to a a former conservative politician um just earlier today, very interested in health, and he was saying to me he felt a bit of sympathy for Boris Johnson over the way he's been criticized in the report. What do you think of that? Uh well I'd be quite surprised to find many people sympathetic towards Boris Johnson and how he's been portrayed in the report. I mean just going back to the point that was just made about policy learning. I think it's really important that uh the the leadership of the whole COVID response would have always come from the top and in some ways it was unfortunate at that time we had a prime minister who uh was well known let's say for a lot of things in life but not for having a detailed diligent interest in policym or the broader administration of the state

or a capacity to learn from experts so I think there's a really unfortunate confluence of variables here and the thing about trust is critical. I mean Boris Johnson never really being part of the Conservative party, never having really good close relationships with backbenches, never really having close working relationships with a lot of the cabinet. And of course that trust issue, it almost sort of cascade out into the public that what we know now from international research is countries that fared best tended to have high levels of public trust in the state and political processes. And under Boris Johnson, we just didn't have that confidence amongst the public. And then of course, Partygate completely broke it completely. So there are different prime ministers and different forms of leaders and um I'm not quite sure when Boris Johnson would have made the right one, but in the middle of the COVID pandemic,

he probably had the opposite skills to the ones you needed. So So I I actually thought at the start of it, I thought that he was going to do very well. He he so in love with this idea of Churchill and great leadership and being a statesman in times of crisis. I thought this is the moment where you're going to hear these Churchillian

you know speeches from him and and this is what you wanted him to do right that the solution to this is to be a leader that can [clears throat] explain to people that action is required even before it is obvious to the man or woman in the street in the best interest of the country and what is needed to protect it. You can write this. I'm writing it on the fly now. and he never gave it and he never showed that leadership and it just seemed to disintegrate.

Yeah. Just on that particular point, I mean the person I was speaking to said, well, if would any other leader have done anything different and I I argued that back well I think probably they would have and I think the the reason I don't give the politicians at that time a free pass before March for two reasons. Number one, you only had to talk to colleagues in Southeast Asia and attend conferences in Southeast Asia to know how they responded to SARS. Okay, it was in a very different way to the way we responded uh to COVID initially um and how aggressive and how uh wellprepared they are for the next time it happens. How aggressively they handled it previously and how well prepared they are for next time.

Secondly, um, at the BMJ and Beex, you probably remember this as well. Uh, first of all, from China and Wuhan, we were getting report after report about how difficult people were finding dealing with this uh, virus from hospital doctors struggling to cope with the pressure on hospitals, with the number of uh, people critically ill, intensive care, number of people dying. And then very soon after we were bombarded with people calling us from Italy and telling us from ITUs in Italy, hospitals in Italy about what was happening the absolute collapse of the health service because they were simply unendated with critically ill patients and they were unsure how best to to to deal with them.

So we knew that it struck me as a bit of a sh you know not quite acceptable that the people running the country did not also have access to that information and that knowledge as well. And from our perspective at the BMJ um we saw the whole thing going in a very kind of worrying direction. And and interestingly, a week before lockdown was announced, we said, "Right, we're all working from home, right? We can see what's coming, we're all working from home." So, I'm not saying, you know, we got it right. We knew what we're talking about. I told you. So, my point simply is that I think there were the signals there that could have urged you to act sooner. And we'll get into whether the lockdowns could have been prevented or not in a minute. But I the yes it was a probably an unprecedented situation in terms of modernday politics. But if you'd actually paid more attention to what you were hearing

internationally, then you might have behaved differently. I and I I would only say that you can't take module 2 in isolation here in terms of the quality of decision-m and whether or not you let the decision makers off the hook as you put it. You know, module one tells us that we were underprepared. You have a health service that is run to the edges of its adaptive capacity. It has no spare capacity. Uh we on the eve of COVID 85% of our intensive care beds are occupied. Our ward beds are 95% occupied routinely during winter.

um and and we it's it's with that state that we enter the coid9 pandemic and so so the the hard decisions the decisions that are important have all been made by that point so that also compounds it and it is the same administration so I I find it hard to well I look I think one has to hold one's hand up and say that there was a series of decisions leading up to it and on the eve of it that are now known to have been wrong and and whether or not one is assigning blame, one needs to recognize that in the spirit of learning.

Yeah. You were working clearly, you know, as a hospital doctor um in in intensive care at that time in critical care.

What were you feeling around that time, Kevin, can you I know you've talked about it, the inquiry.

So, there was there was huge trepidation. Um, we were seeing scenes out of Wuhan and and I remember very clearly watching a video of them, an incubation team going in a and watching what was happening and hearing those reports. I then remember watching Lombardi and and Northern Italy get into the trouble they got into and thinking, if this is not hype, if this is not

just this over-the-top reporting, we're in [clears throat] massive trouble. I reflect on that time now and the fact that we didn't act you know generally with more urgency as perhaps those are the first stages of some sort of national state of denial you know because this thing has escaped Wuhan escaped China escaped Southeast Asia it's now in Europe the idea that it's not going to be on top of you and hitting you in the same way seems utterly lud ludicrous to me now

although we had that sense well we had that sense okay [clears throat] um Matthew just building on the point about learning because the point is that we should be learning from an inquiry. Do you think that's really happening the way the response has played out this week?

Uh I think yes is the overall message. I think co has been seen as the inquiry that is uh is far too important to overlook. Although there is a structural issue here that we had a big uh inquiry by the House of Lord special inquiry on inquiries not long ago when its main recommendation was that the vast majority of recommendations from these sort of inquiries are never actually implemented. So one of the big questions coming forward and I see the actual baroners has been very clear to say that uh the inquiry will monitor the implementation of recommendations until the inquiry ends. The big question is actually by that point many of the inquiries will still the recommendations will be out there hanging and what structures will there be in place to ensure that any recommendations uh that are hung over are actually taken forward.

Okay. Can I ask you in terms of learning uh what do you think we should have the government should learn from this? What I appreciate some of the people who are involved are no longer in government hence that we've heard their denials this week. Um but if you were now in government, what should you be learning from what you've heard this week from Hallel?

I think there are two two main issues here. Uh one is the science and advisory structures need to be far more robust and put in place and the government needs to have much clearer objectives and an understanding of what those advisory processes can deliver. Also I think there's a big issue about the amount of churn in Whiteall. Um, one of the great problems in white is institutional memory. Um, huge amounts of ministerial turnover and official turnover often wipe out institutional memory. So things that might have only happened a year or two ago, all the staff already gone and moved on. So there is a big question about how do we better engage with the science and evidence base because to be honest and to push back on some of the studio discussion I think it's really important to understand and I'm not saying it's perfect but just to get a sense of how intense the Whiteall Westminster bubble

is and to say that yes there were things happening all over the world and there were evidence and data emerging and I'm sure the BMJ were on top of the understanding for a rational response But political structures often have irrational incentives built into them which can be very hard to understand from the outside. Plus the structures around ministers to give them that expertise can often be very very uh we call problematic. So it's strengthening the scientific advice structures number one. uh secondly is doing what it can which is an age-old issue about reducing the amount of institutional churn and improving institutional memory.

Okay. Thank you. You mentioned the scientific structure. Now we had our own series of papers. We called it our own co inquiry papers in which in each paper we ended up by ask by posing a set of questions that the inquiry might want to ask but it was focus on the the scientific structure. um uh in relation to how that informed government and how it informed politicians. Uh and Martin McKe who's a professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine uh who was also a member of Independent Sage which was this independent group that offered advice um kind of in in parallel to the official advice that the government was receiving from its own advisers. Um he authored an editorial that went with that inquiry. Uh we're just going to hear him talk to our producer Duncan Javis.

I The report talks about the way in which Sage would be asked questions without necessarily knowing why they were being asked those questions and then when they gave the answers they would not get feedback as to whether their answers had been of any use. Members of Sage have spoken on the record about how in the case of care homes, they had really no idea about the practical arrangements in care homes that members of staff could work in different care homes in the same week. And they've said that had they known that they would have designed their models differently. So I think that highlights the importance of having that interaction to know that when someone asks you a question as a scientist, you know why they're asking it. But that doesn't mean that you want to be party political. You need to understand where the questions are coming from.

And you mentioned there the difference between politics and party politics. and Boris Johnson, the uh um prime minister at the time, it seems like was engaging very much in party politics. His boosterism around Brexit and the UK being able to do it its own own thing and and made him very unwilling to to listen to other countries to to follow what was being advised elsewhere. I think there were practical issues here in that our links to particularly the European Center for Disease Control and to our neighbors in Europe, but also more widely had broken down as a result of Brexit. Brexit had many impacts on the pandemic. First of all, a very large proportion of the work of the civil service was dedicated to quote getting Brexit done unquote. and that's been identified by parliamentary committees particularly before less prominent in this report but it's been highlighted before um but I think the second issue

and it may well come out in fact I know that it will come out in later modules one of which I gave evidence to where we were looking uh where things were happening elsewhere parliamentary committees have um issued a number of reports pointing out the failure to look at what was happening in East Asia in particular where there was a lot of expertise. I work in many other European countries and I see it work far better. the fact that people like myself can have really in-depth conversations with ministers in other European countries with um people that I really respect because they really understand the issues and I can't imagine doing that in the United Kingdom or in England.

That was Martin McKe from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Um Kevin um I think probably just a a final point to you're a systems person.

Systems should be learning. I mean how do you get a system like the political scientific system to learn from this and do better next time?

So I it's very difficult with this inquiry. It's important. It's important and we are spending a huge amount of money on it. But when are you ever going to see an event like this? This is the biggest national emergency since World War II.

It is the only uh event of this type that will ever be documented in the way that this was. No one is ever going to use WhatsApp ever again thinking it is a secure way to message one another. So it is forensic in the detail we will have from it. So it's it's like the Rosetta Stone of events for us to learn from here. The things that we must learn is firstly I actually you know we want to we want to assign blame here. We we want to find people who should be on the hook. I think that is understandable. But the interests of learning are served by saying just let's be honest about where we did well and where we did badly. That's the only thing we can do now in the service of the future. There are some specific things to pick out from module 2's report that are important. The first is this.

From the point of view of the National Health Service, it was all about its capacity to absorb the the increased number of the increased demand for healthcare that resulted from co

Baroness Hallet talks about the possibility that 23,000 lives may have been saved had we gone into measures earlier, a week earlier, just a week earlier. What isn't said is that those 23,000 deaths would have been also excess deaths would have been also accompanied by many tens of thousands of additional hospital admissions that were focused on a very small number of geographies. So massively increasing the strain there. That's the first specific lesson. Second, it is interesting that they say that lockdown may have been avoided. It's I I I almost think that it's distracting to talk about that because the word may is doing a lot of work there. I think it may have been avoided if we'd gone earlier and you had an intact ability to surveil the disease and then to um contain and isolate. I think module one tells you you had nine of those capacities. Um thirdly, I think it's about uh your ability to learn from

what is happening in front of you. uh and and Baron Asalates very clear in in module 2 report this is a government that didn't learn and so was too little too late not just in in March uh in February and March but also in subsequent uh waves throughout the country particularly on the runup in into January the 4th uh and then um finally really it it's about what the central message of this is forget about it strip out the politics ICS that government is gone and this is about the future and I'm for me the takeaway from module 2 is if you are honestly I have I have very little regard for what the reputation of these people is who are involved in the decision-m you know there are people out there with much more at stake than their reputations and this is about protecting the future

and so if you are listening to this podcast 10 20 30 years into the future wondering what you're going to do is something bruise somewhere else in the world. The message is given to you by Patrick Valance's uh evidence of Patrick Valance's evidence as as chief scientific adviser of the time which is in the face of a pandemic like this you must enact social restrictions earlier harder and more broadly than you would like. And I think that is the key message to future governments. You have to have some humility in the face of this. You have to be able to act before it's obvious to the man or woman in the street that it's coming and otherwise you'll pay the price and we have.

Good. Thank you very much. Um, a final question for you Matthew which is I think you started with this and you expressed some surprise that Baronessa has been so strong in her uh kind of judgments. Why do you think that is? Well, I think you know Baron H has a very detailed understanding of the the social impact that it's had and also its long-term reverberations for public trust and confidence in the British state and its processes. I hope that what we will see is almost an end to what the report lays bare which is a kind of a a good chaps theory of government which is very amateur-ish. It isn't good at listening, isn't very good at learning. But the challenge here is that essentially moving towards that systems thinking that strategic policy planning is anathema to the current culture of Whiteall. So my great worry is that actually although we've had the COVID crisis, it won't drive systemic change

to the level and the extent that's actually needed to prevent something like this happening again.

Okay. Well, I think we're probably hoping it doesn't happen again. Uh, but thank you very much for your time today. That's it for this special episode of the Medicine and Science podcast from the BMJ. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss our regular episodes. Until we meet again, I'm Cameron Abassi. Thanks for listening.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "The Covid Inquiry - special episode"?

Cameron Abassi (Host), Baroness Hallet (Guest), Rebecca Kums (Guest), Kevin Fong (Guest), Matthew Flinders (Guest).

What is "The Covid Inquiry - special episode" about?

The inquiry led by Baroness Hallett examines the UK government's decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on its governance and preparedness. The recent report highlights key findings from the second module of the investigation, revealing the considerable costs involved and the implementation of several recommendations aimed at improving future pandemic response efforts.

What is mentioned in this The BMJ episode?

14 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Baroness Hallet, COVID-19 pandemic, Boris Johnson, Kevin Fong, BMJ, Cameron Abassi. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "The Covid Inquiry - special episode"?

The episode runs 31 min; the transcript is about 5,424 words in 60 timestamped sections.

More from The BMJ

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.