Edward Argar – 2024 Speech on the Covid-19 Inquiry

The speech made by Edward Argar, the Conservative MP for Melton and Syston, in the House of Commons on 19 July 2024.

I thank the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster not only for early sight of his statement, for which I am grateful, but for his tone in how he addressed what is an extremely sobering report—module 1 of nine. I suspect that we will look at many more such sobering reports in the coming months.

I put on the record our gratitude to Lady Hallett and her team for the work that they have done and to all the witnesses who gave evidence, particularly those who had experienced loss and trauma. That evidence was vital, but giving it will not have been in any way easy, given what they had been through. I pay tribute to them. This module, the first of nine, is not only a hugely important piece of work, but the least this country owes to those who lost loved ones in the course of the pandemic.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster rightly talked about how this country came together in the face of an unprecedented event, about which we learned more every day as the country had to adapt to changing knowledge. I join him in paying tribute to emergency workers and all across the country who worked in whatever way to come together and help the country get through, but particularly to those who worked in the NHS and care services and those who lost someone. It was an incredibly traumatic time for the entire country.

What has been set out by the right hon. Gentleman today and by Lady Hallett yesterday is deeply sobering. It lays bare failures of the state in respect of planning, challenge, resourcing and leadership. Irrespective of Government or party in power, it is incumbent upon us all to consider it in the spirit in which Lady Hallett has put forward her recommendations.

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his recognition of the work already done since the pandemic to improve resilience in this country and ensure that we are better prepared for the next one. We started that work in government, having announced the largest overhaul of our resilience structures in decades. We created the resilience directorate within the Cabinet Office, breaking it out from day-to-day crisis management so that it could focus on resilience, horizon scanning and better preparedness. We set up the resilience academy to increase and improve the training of Ministers, MPs, civil servants and all those in civil society who respond to crises. We also announced a new national exercising programme to test our systems.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster highlighted that the focus of previous pandemic preparedness planning was around influenza. It was seen in the context of Operation Cygnus, which was often pointed to as the blueprint of how to prepare for these things. The right hon. Gentleman was right that it focused on influenza, for which we have therapeutics; in the case of the covid pandemic, we did not. As a country and a civil society, we need to look completely across the piece at how we can best prepare for whatever eventuality may occur.

In setting out his next steps, the right hon. Gentleman adopted exactly the right approach; I am grateful to him for that and for his candour. There will be many more lessons still to learn. It is incredibly important for our country, this Government and any future Government that we learn the lessons to ensure that we are ready for future pandemics, however painful those lessons are. I am also grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s commitment to respond swiftly.

I have a few questions for the right hon. Gentleman. What plans does he have to consult the devolved Administrations and local government structures on the detailed changes proposed to how they would operate in the context of a future emergency? What steps will he and the Government be taking to ensure that our emergency planning structures are more cohesively joined up if our country is to face another pandemic?

More importantly, I want to conclude by saying that we stand ready to work constructively and openly with the right hon. Gentleman and the Government in the national interest to ensure that, as a country, we learn the lessons from this module and from Lady Hallett’s future recommendations to build better resilience in our country and ensure that, irrespective of who is in government, the country is better prepared in future. That is the least that all of us in the House owe the country and those who lost loved ones or suffered in so many different ways—those whose mental health suffered, the children who suffered from not being able to go to school, those who suffered from domestic abuse, and those up and down the country who in many ways still suffer from what happened back then.

As I have said, I approach this issue in a spirit of co-operation with the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. I look forward to working with him in the national interest and to building resilience for the future.

Pat McFadden

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his response and for the tone in which he spoke. He set out what the previous Government have done, and in my statement I acknowledged that progress has been made, but I think it is also right that a new Government take the opportunity to have a fresh look at this, with fresh eyes and in the right spirit.

The right hon. Gentleman asked a couple of questions on consultation with the devolved Administrations. Yes, that is essential, as is consultation within England with local authorities and elected mayors. It is important that different parts of the country work together when there is a national emergency. There were also questions about how this operates within Government and the balance of responsibility between the centre and individual Government Departments. Baroness Hallett is quite clear that in a truly national emergency the centre has to step up and responsibility cannot be left to individual Departments.

The right hon. Gentleman was right to conclude with the spirit of co-operation that we need on this issue. This work is in the national interest and in the public’s interest. It is the first duty of any Government of any political stripe to do what they can to protect the public. The challenge is that the risks we face are more complex and more unpredictable than they have been in the past. As I said in my statement, we cannot fully plan for every risk, but we have to try to have a system in place that gives us the best possible chance of planning for the risks we can see in front of us.