Recommendation 145

Written evidence to our inquiry suggested that the loss of consistency across the four nations led to confusion, with “messages from numerous national bodies that, at times, appeared to contradict each other”.229 We heard that at this stage, these contradicting messages began to cause confusion. Professor Devi Sridhar, speaking to the Health and Social Care Committee in July 2020, explicitly linked this confusion to infection rates: One point where you can see that England and Scotland diverged was when England changed in May to: “Stay alert.” Many people did not fully understand what that meant. In Scotland, the message was very clear: “Stay at home.” When we started to see divergence in infection rates and death rates, it was around that time.230