Recommendation 17

We examined the initial lessons that can be learned from government’s response to the pandemic in June 2021 based on 20 evidence sessions on various aspects of the government’s response. In our report, we set out our views on what government can 32 Q 5 33 Committee of Public Accounts, Fraud and Error, Ninth Report of Session 2021–22, HC253, 24 June 2021 34 Committee of Public Accounts, Twelfth Report of Session 2021–22, COVID-19 Cost Tracker Update, HC173, 19 July 2021 35 Q 2; HM Treasury, Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Twelfth and Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Reports from Session 2021–22, CP 583, 9 December 2021 36 Q 2 37 Q 2 38 Q 40 COVID-19 cost tracker update 15 learn from its response to the pandemic, what it should do to ensure that those lessons are applied, and what it should do to improve both its ability to respond to emergencies and its business-as-usual service delivery. We noted that the future public inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic could take some years to complete, and that government could not wait for the review before learning important lessons.39