The British government still does not keep the public “sufficiently” safe from pandemics, a leading expert in emergency planning and management has told the UK’s Covid inquiry.
On the third day of the inquiry’s first week of evidence, expert witness David Alexander spoke about the state of the UK’s approach to emergency planning. A professor in the Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction at University College London, his evidence focused in particular on the period leading up to the Covid pandemic.
Alexander said the UK and its institutions had produced “good thinking” on the possibility of future risks and challenges the country may face. But the extent to which this thinking is used in planning and preparedness arrangements for such events “is a very different matter”.
