Parliament's damning report conclusion this week that the government made "big mistakes" during the COVID pandemic leading to "one of the most important public health failures the UK has ever experienced" reflected underlying skills weaknesses in government and a lack of training for Ministers says David Finlay, a former Director of the National Audit Office.
In his new book Coronadiary: 100 days that changed our lives and three skills government had been told to improve Finlay shows that shortcomings such as the lack of a rigorous plan for dealing with a respiratory illness virus, insufficient initial testing to track the virus spread and a faliure to protect care homes all revealed a lack of planning, making good use of data and managing risk, three skills government had been repeatedly told to improve before the pandemic in official reports including those by the National Audit Office, Public Accounts Committee and Institute for Government.
Finlay...
