Recommendation 3

HM Government Not Addressed

The UK Government and the Devolved Governments have responded to unprecedented challenges during the pandemic in order to protect public health, the NHS, save lives, and livelihoods. The response to the pandemic has required changes to our laws. Legal changes have only been used when necessary, with proportionate action being taken to help achieve the Government’s strategic objectives in respect of the public health context at the time. The Government has removed legal restrictions at the earliest opportunity when it has been safe to do so. The vast majority of COVID-19 restrictions were removed in July 2021, as part of the move to Step 4 of the Roadmap out of lockdown. In responding to Omicron, the Government acted swiftly and proportionately, introducing time-limited regulations to underpin the move to Plan B of the Autumn/Winter Plan. Following the success of the booster program and the way the public responded to the Plan B measures, the Government announced on 19 January that Plan B measures were no longer necessary. England therefore reverted to Plan A, with the regulations underpinning Plan B removed. As set out in the Living with COVID-19 Plan, the Government’s objective in the next phase of the response is to enable the country to manage COVID-19 like other respiratory illnesses, while minimising mortality and retaining the ability to respond if a new variant emerges with more dangerous properties than Omicron, or during periods of waning immunity, that could again threaten to place the NHS under unsustainable pressure. As part of this strategy, the Government will move away from deploying regulations and requirements in England and replace specific interventions for COVID-19 with public health measures and guidance. The Government is able to take this step now because of the success of the vaccination programme, and the suite of pharmaceutical tools the NHS can deploy to treat people who are most vulnerable to COVID-19 and the most severely ill. The Government can only take these steps because it will retain contingency capabilities and will respond as necessary to further resurgences or worse variants of the virus. It is important to recognise that the pandemic is not over. Living with and managing the virus will mean maintaining the population’s wall of protection and communicating safer behaviours that the public can follow to manage risk.