NAO report shows government should have done more to protect health and social care from pandemic

Commenting on the NAO report on initial learning from the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Danny Mortimer, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: 

“This report reinforces the long-term issues that severely weakened the foundations of health and care, which meant the country was not better prepared to deal with the pandemic and its fallout. Chronic workforce shortages across the NHS, coupled with ongoing financial pressures, have contributed to the devastation wrought over the past year – something the Government should have worked harder to alleviate before the pandemic took hold and which still remain a profound challenge.
 
“There are also many vital lessons for the Government to learn from the past fourteen months, including the need for speed in imposing lockdowns, something that is particularly important to bear in mind as we are seeing a worrying rise in the number cases of the variant of COVID-19 first identified in India.

“Importantly, this report also highlights the ever more pressing need to make sure reform of the social care sector is swift and far-reaching. The two are sister services, and when one is hit hard, so is the other. Our members stand with their colleagues in social care in their dismay that the experiences highlighted so starkly in this report did not result in the promised action by the Prime Minister and Chancellor.”