‘Chaotic’ culture in UK government led to more COVID deaths, research finds | News about the coronavirus pandemic

The “toxic and chaotic” culture at the heart of the UK government led to a delayed response to the COVID-19 pandemic that led to around 23,000 more deaths across the country, according to a damning report from an inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic.

The investigation, which former Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered in May 2021, yielded a blunt assessment (PDF) on Thursday about his government’s response to COVID-19, criticizing his indecisive leadership, criticizing his Downing Street office for breaking its own rules and chastising his top adviser Dominic Cummings. The inquiry was chaired by former judge Heather Hallett.

“The failure to appreciate the magnitude of the threat, or the urgency of the response it demanded, meant that when the possibility of a mandatory lockdown was first considered it was too late and the lockdown had become inevitable,” the investigation concluded. “At the heart of the UK government was a toxic and chaotic culture.”

The global pandemic, which began in 2020, killed millions of people around the world, and countries imposed lockdowns in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus.

The UK went into lockdown on March 23, 2020, by which time it was “too little, too late”, the research concluded, which revealed that if the country had gone into lockdown just a week earlier, on March 16, the number of deaths in the first wave of the pandemic up to July would have been reduced by around 23,000, or 48 per cent.

“If the UK had been better prepared, lives would have been saved, suffering would have been reduced and the economic cost of the pandemic would have been much lower,” the investigation concluded.

Hallett’s research found that failure to act again sooner, as cases rose at the end of the year, also led to new national lockdowns.

A campaign group for bereaved families said: “It is devastating to think of the lives that could have been saved under a different Prime Minister.”

There was no immediate comment from Johnson on the investigation’s findings.

The UK has recorded more than 230,000 COVID deaths – a death rate similar to the US and Italy but higher than elsewhere in Western Europe – and is still recovering from the economic fallout.

“Mr Johnson should have understood earlier that this was an emergency requiring the Prime Minister’s leadership to inject urgency into the response,” the inquiry concluded.

Following the publication of the findings of the inquiry, Sir Ed Davey called on Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative Party, to apologize on behalf of the Conservatives.

“As this report is released, my thoughts and prayers are with all those who lost loved ones during the pandemic and with all those who suffered,” Davey said. “This report confirms the abject failure of the last Conservative government.”

Ellie Chowns, Green Party MP for North Herefordshire, said the government had “let down” the British people.

“Families and communities (especially children) are still living with the consequences. It is vital to learn from this report and invest much more seriously in pandemic preparedness, so that Britain can be safe and resilient if (or when) we face such a challenge again.”

The first cases of COVID-19 were detected in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, and information from the country is considered key to preventing future pandemics. In June 2025, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it was working to discover the origin of the pandemic, but its work was still incomplete as “critical information had not been provided.”

“We continue to call on China and any other country that has information on the origins of COVID-19 to share it openly, in the interest of protecting the world from future pandemics,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in June.

In 2021, Tedros launched the WHO Scientific Advisory Group on the Origin of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), a panel of 27 independent international experts.

Marietjie Venter, the group’s president, said earlier this year that most scientific data supports the hypothesis that the new coronavirus jumped from animals to humans.

But he added that after more than three years of work, SAGO was unable to obtain the data needed to assess whether or not COVID was the result of a laboratory accident, despite repeated requests for detailed information made to the Chinese government.