Matt Hancock has blamed failures in the UK’s pandemic planning on local authorities, civil servants and overconfidence on the part of the World Health Organisation.
Grilling the former health secretary at the Covid-19 inquiry today about the adult social care sector, chief counsel Hugo Keith said: “[Your] department had no means for finding out whether they had the right pandemic plans, whether local authorities had planned sufficiently, let alone how many numbers were in the care sector.”
Hancock agreed, adding: “It was terrible”. He went on to claim that despite being the head of the Department of Health and Social Care, he “didn’t have the levers to act” on adult social care as it is the responsibility of local authorities.
