Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Thirteenth Report - Initial lessons from the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic
Public Accounts Committee
HC 175
Published 25 July 2021
Conclusions (27)
2
Conclusion
Government’s ability to make well-informed decisions and address issues as they arise during the pandemic has been hampered by slow progress in addressing longstanding issues with data and legacy IT. We have repeatedly highlighted longstanding data issues within government, including the lack of data standards, ageing IT systems, fragmented leadership, …
3
Conclusion
Government risks undermining public trust and accountability for the pandemic response because of departments’ repeated failure to provide a full rationale for key decisions. We recognise that the pandemic has required departments to work at speed in difficult circumstances. But, as we have found in our previous examinations of the …
4
Conclusion
A lack of clarity, timeliness and the volume of government communications has, at times, hindered the public’s understanding of guidelines and ability to comply with them. Government published a large amount of guidance during the early stages of the pandemic. Some departments, for example HM Revenue & Customs, developed effective, …
5
Conclusion
Government has yet to improve its approach to managing risk or set out which trade-offs it intends to make in future emergencies. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of carrying out robust risk planning and being clear about risk appetite and risk tolerance. Government lacked pre-existing plans for many aspects …
6
Conclusion
Government needs to do more to support the health and social care workforce, who have been under constant pressure during the pandemic, to ensure its resilience going forward. The pandemic has compounded pre-existing challenges in the health and social care sectors. In February 2020, the NHS had about 40,000 nursing …
1
Conclusion
On the basis of a Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from the Cabinet Office, the Department of Health & Social Care (the Department) and HM Treasury on initial lessons from the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.1
7
Conclusion
We asked the Department how much PPE it expected to need over the next 12 months. The Department estimated that it will require around 11.7 billion items of PPE from 1 June 2021 to 31 May 2022, although it noted that this estimate was highly uncertain. As of 17 May, …
8
Conclusion
We have repeatedly highlighted the longstanding funding and workforce challenges facing the health and social care sectors. In 2018 we examined the adult social care workforce in England and reported that levels of unmet social care need were high and rising, while staff turnover was as high as 27.8% and …
9
Conclusion
The pandemic placed great stress on some health and social care workers already under pressure. In our report Readying the NHS and social care for the COVID-19 peak, we found that thanks to the commitment of thousands of staff and volunteers and by postponing a large amount of planned work, …
10
Conclusion
In our July 2020 report on Readying the NHS and social care for the COVID-19 peak, we recommended that the Department and NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSE&I) should identify and agree with relevant professional bodies specific actions to support health and social care staff to recover from the impact …
11
Conclusion
The Department has yet to publish a long-term plan to improve the resilience of the health and social care workforce. Our NHS nursing workforce report, published in September 2020, noted that there had been further delay to the overdue NHS People Plan, which was originally due to be published in …
12
Conclusion
We have repeatedly highlighted longstanding issues with the quality of data held by government and with its ability to use data effectively to support policy interventions. In our 2019 report Challenges in using data across government, we noted the lack of government-wide data standards, ageing IT systems, fragmented leadership, and …
13
Conclusion
The pandemic has again highlighted the role of high-quality data in enabling effective service delivery, monitoring and improvement. For example, due to missing or inaccurate telephone numbers within NHS patient records, the shielding programme was unable to follow-up letters to 375,000 vulnerable people with phone calls. Local authorities, which were …
14
Conclusion
All of the witnesses highlighted the importance of data in responding to the pandemic and acknowledged a key lesson from the last year was the need to improve the quality of data available to citizens and to government, including the quality and granularity of regional economic data, and improving the …
15
Conclusion
The NAO found that the pandemic had disproportionately impacted specific groups of people. For example, disrupted schooling is likely to have longer-term adverse effects on children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Education Endowment Foundation predicted that schools closures in the 2019/20 academic year could widen the attainment gap between disadvantaged children …
16
Conclusion
In responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, government departments and public bodies have needed to procure enormous volumes of goods, services and works with extreme urgency. Our report on Government procurement and supply of PPE found that, by the end of July 2020, government had awarded over 8,000 contracts for goods …
17
Conclusion
Our February 2021 report found that for fast procurements where there is no competition, it is important that awarding bodies document why they have chosen a supplier and how any associated risks from a lack of competition have been identified and managed, and that transparency also helps to ensure accountability …
18
Conclusion
We received written evidence from the Royal Statistical Society, from Northumbria University on behalf of the Observatory for Monitoring Data-Driven Approaches to COVID-19, and from Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society. This emphasised the need for government to be more transparent in publishing the data and rationale behind …
19
Conclusion
Our previous work has shown a mixed picture in terms of the views of end users regarding the satisfaction and success of programmes introduced in response to the pandemic. Gathering feedback from end users and frontline workers is vital for monitoring the effectiveness of interventions and improving existing processes.41 We …
20
Conclusion
We have previously highlighted the danger that reluctance to evaluate COVID-19 measures will result in departments learning lessons too late and embedding problems of design, delivery and effectiveness of response schemes which will need to adapt over time.43 HM Treasury told us that for the government’s major support schemes, it …
21
Conclusion
Government published a large amount of guidance during the early stages of the pandemic. The NAO found that effective communication and public engagement are crucial to ensuring that COVID-19 response programmes succeed. Some departments, such as HM Revenue & Customs, developed clear and consistent communications and engagement plans for initiatives …
22
Conclusion
Written evidence from Birmingham City University, which analysed a large body of government’s and public health bodies’ Twitter messages relating to COVID-19, identified a wide range of language-related issues in communications. These included: messages without specific content; a lack of clarity about who messages were directed to; the use of …
23
Conclusion
We asked the Cabinet Office about recent communications about travel in and out of local areas. On 14 May 2021, the GOV.UK website advised the public against travel out of areas with high levels of the delta variant of the virus, including Bolton, Blackburn with Darwen and Kirklees. This led …
24
Conclusion
The pandemic has highlighted the importance of carrying out robust risk planning and being clear about risk appetite and risk tolerance. Our previous work, including on support for children’s education during the pandemic and on the Bounce Bank Loans Scheme, has found that the government lacked pre-existing plans for many …
25
Conclusion
Our recent report on fraud and error highlighted that the taxpayer is expected to lose billions of pounds from the increased risk of fraud and error in the government’s COVID-19 schemes. It found that the cost of fraud and error within the tax and benefits system is fairly well understood …
26
Conclusion
The NAO found that government had made other trade-offs during the pandemic, for example paying higher prices for goods than it would have paid before the pandemic.55 It also had to balance the risks to the economy of enacting lockdowns and other restrictions with the risks to public health of …
27
Conclusion
In May 2021, the government published the Boardman review into government procurement during the COVID-19 pandemic. It aimed to understand what lessons the government could learn from the procurement of PPE, ventilators, vaccines, test and trace and food parcels for the clinically extremely vulnerable to be better equipped to meet …