Covid probe shows we're not ready for another disaster

HERE is a dangerous pattern in British politics: we respond in crisis, then forget in calm.

- Tobias Ellwood

Students queue for the meningitis B vaccine at the University of Kent campus.

The UK Covid-19 Inquiry is laying bare just how costly that instinct can be. Its findings are stark. The NHS was pushed "close to collapse", with hospitals overwhelmed, staff stretched beyond endurance, routine care delayed, and lives lost that might have been saved.This was not simply bad luck. It was the consequence of ignoring repeated recommendations from studies, reports and even a pandemic simulation exercise in October 2016 which concluded the NHS would be overwhelmed. Inquiry chair Baroness Hallett has been clear - the pandemic exposed deep structural weaknesses, not just in how we responded to Covid, but in our broader readiness for health emergencies.

The warning could not be more explicit. The question is whether we are listening.

Yet at the very moment we should be absorbing these lessons, ministers are moving in the opposite direction. Last week's decision to remove the UK's contribution to the Pandemic Fund, as a consequence of wider cuts to the overseas aid budget, risks dismantling the systems designed to stop the next outbreak before it reaches our shores.