The early pandemic response offers the government lessons for the next phase

Repeated U-turns, failure to deliver on commitments and badly thought-out announcements: the government has – at times – struggled to get a grip on the coronavirus crisis.

Our new report looks at how decisions were shaped on three key aspects of the early phase of the response: economic support measures, the commitment to conducting 100,000 tests per day, and the lockdown and school closures. In some areas, the government has acted quickly and effectively. But in others, the opposite is true. Mistakes were made in the use of evidence, in knowing who was responsible for what, and in the government being clear about what it wanted to achieve.

Government needs know not just what it wants to do, but why

Before it decides what to do, the government must first think about the ‘why’. What problem is it trying to solve or avoid? In too many cases throughout this pandemic, particularly when under pressure, it has failed to do this. Instead it made announcements without thinking through the consequences or the purpose.

Of our case studies, this was most evident with testing. The government did not have a good enough sense of how it wanted to use testing capacity, for instance to inform localised lockdowns or in contact tracing. This – combined with the intense media scrutiny invited by the health secretary’s headline-grabbing pledge – meant the target became an end in itself, rather than a means to a more important goal. This led to the reporting of data being skewed and a rush to conduct unnecessary tests on 30 April, Hancock's self-determined deadline, with the government’s attention diverted from making testing available to those who needed it most.

In the case of the government’s economic support measures, on the other hand, both ministers and officials knew the aim was to deliver generous assistance, and quickly. This gave officials direction and won the confidence of business and unions. It also meant ministers and officials to factor in implementation from the start, rather than treating it as an afterthought. This was critical to its success.

Government has used too little evidence at times, but waited too long for scientific answers at others

The lockdown was a more complicated story: the government had a clear sense of what it wanted to achieve – to ensure the NHS was not overwhelmed – but had set itself too narrow a goal. Saving the NHS needed to be just one of its objectives. Spare hospital capacity was not enough to save lives.

Ideally, government should use expertise to inform its decisions. In the case of the lockdown, it got this wrong. The government looked to its Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) for answers. But they did not have them – at least as quickly as needed to make a timely decision. Waiting for SAGE endorsement meant delay, and SAGE was always designed to feed scientific expertise and evidence into broader policy discussions, not to be the policy makers themselves. Ministers should have realised the limits of both SAGE and the evidence base it relied on.

At the other end of the scale, when it came to testing the health secretary did not appear to consult nearly enough. Matt Hancock does not seem to have spoken to industry (who would supply the chemicals needed to run the tests), the NHS (whose staff desperately needed them) or even to his own testing co-ordinator. This undermined the credibility of the target and led to senior civil servants distancing themselves from the decision when questioned by parliamentary committees.

Government needs to be clear about who is responsible for what

Responding to the coronavirus requires many departments and bodies to work together, often with local government, businesses, industry groups and others. This means government needs to be clear about who is responsible for what – lest important tasks slip through the cracks. This worked well on the economic support measures. We were told the different players knew their position “on the pitch” and played it well.

But it is still unclear which department was leading the overall testing strategy. Senior civil servants gave contradictory answers, and Public Health England and the Department of Health and Social Care pointed the finger at each other. When care homes tried to access tests they faced similar problems, with different parts of government pointing them in different directions.

To an extent, some of the failures outlined in our report are understandable. The spectre of locking down an entire country was a lot for decision makers to get their heads around. But the government can learn from those mistakes. By clearly assigning responsibility, thinking through its strategy before it decides on action and taking a balanced approach to evidence, ministers will be better placed to meet the extraordinary demands of the crisis.