The Government was not ready for the pandemic, the Covid inquiry heard.
Hugo Keith KC said No10 claimed in March 2020 that the UK was well prepared for the virus’s onslaught.
But as the inquiry began its lead lawyer said Britain was taken by surprise by Covid that had caused “death, misery and incalculable loss”.
As victims’ families told of their pain, Mr Keith claimed the impact of lockdowns was not fully considered.
In his opening statetment, he said the Department of Health and Social Care and devolved governments published a strategy on tackling Covid after the outbreak.
He added: “The plan stated the United Kingdom was well prepared to respond in a way that offered substantial protection to the public. It is apparent we might not have been very well prepared at all.”
It was claimed pandemic planning before Covid had focused on a flu outbreak, leaving the UK unprepared for mass testing or non-flu medicines.
Mr Keith said it was extraordinary how little discussion had taken place about whether a national lockdown would be needed for a runaway virus.
He added there was a failure to think through the potentially huge impact of lockdown on education and the economy.
Evidence revealed chaos after the outbreak, with health officials finding out guidance from TV conferences and medics making PPE from bin bags.
Mr Keith said vital decisions on shielding, school closures, saving jobs and lockdown rules were barely considered.
He said the inquiry should look at whether terrible outcomes for people with health issues or those from poor or minority backgrounds were foreseen or could have been mitigated.
Mr Keith also called for scrutiny over whether the NHS had been properly funded ahead of the pandemic.
More than three years after the start of the pandemic, the inquiry will carry out the first in-depth probe into No10’s handling of the virus.
Covid has claimed more than 227,000 lives in Britain so far.
Evidence sessions began yesterday for the first phase of the probe.
It will look at how well prepared the UK was when Covid hit and decision-making leading up to it. Chairwoman Baroness Heather Hallett was moved by a 17-minute film where weeping relatives told of losing loved ones.
They spoke of not being unable to be with victims when they died, and hearing of their deaths over the phone or through a care home window.
Baroness Hallett said she would demand answers to three questions on behalf of millions who suffered and continue to suffer from the pandemic.
These are whether the UK was properly prepared, whether the response was appropriate and if lessons can be learned for the future.
Baroness Hallett welcomed the vigil of relatives outside the inquiry in Paddington, West London. The TUC and Labour have said services were hollowed out by Tory austerity, leaving the NHS critically exposed to Covid.
Mr Keith said panic over the threat of a no-deal Brexit from 2018 may have crowded out the Government’s pandemic planning.
Operation Yellowhammer, the no-deal contingency plan that was leaked in 2019, showed how ministers were preparing for riots, hiked food prices and disruption to medical supplies.
Mr Keith asked whether it drained resources or aided preparations. Neasa Murnaghan KC, the lawyer for the Northern Ireland Department of Health, said no-deal planning did take up time in the country.
But on balance it was advantageous as officials were trained and supply chains strengthened.
Steven Ford KC, for the Association of Directors of Public Health, said local health chiefs were repeatedly excluded, partly because No10 did not have up-to-date contacts lists.
He said they found out details from TV press conferences. Brian Stanton, lawyer for the British Medical Association, added medics often had to go without PPE, buy their own or use homemade or expired items.
Sam Jacobs, representing the TUC, warned the Government’s attempts to block disclosure of WhatsApps belonging to ex-PM Boris Johnson and other key figures was corrosive.
He urged No10 to engage properly with the inquiry to avoid thousands of deaths in a future pandemic.
The inquiry will take evidence on its first module for six weeks, with final public hearings due to conclude by the summer of 2026.
Relatives tell stories of grief and horror as Covid swept across UK
Jane from West Mids
At the start of the pandemic, Jane, from the West Midlands, warned her boss at work: "We need to take this seriously…We're going to know people that die from this.”
She added to the inquiry: “But I never thought for a minute it'd be my dad or my sister five days apart."
“Within half an hour of me being home and leaving my dad, my sister was being rushed to hospital unresponsive and then all week they were saying, ‘she's not going to make the night, she's not going to make the night’.
“Then I said ‘can you try and call us then if you can if there's time to get us up there - we don't want her to die alone she was only 54.’ And she died alone, five days after my dad."
Catherine from Wales
Catherine, whose father was 86 and in a care home, was told he was going to die "imminently".
"The only thing we could do was be outside his window in the icy sleety rain.
"Dad's arms were reaching towards me to help him and I couldn't. It's not really an ideal way to say goodbye to your father or anyone.
"And because I live alone and all my family's abroad, I told them not to come back because it was lockdown. It would've just been a nightmare. So I arranged his funeral alone…I didn't hug anybody from hearing that Dad was going to die right through until past the funeral, I didn't hug anybody.
"It was a frightening time. It was a very, very lonely time.”
John from Wales
John, whose wife had COPD [Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] and had recently been in hospital, said: "I awoke to see her sitting on the edge of the bed and she couldn't stop coughing. She was coughing, coughing, coughing. The ward rang to say that her last test came back positive.
"I woke up and I was really, really ill. I must have phoned 999 and I can't remember opening the door to paramedics and then the next thing I knew I woke up in the ward.
"Anyway, a couple of days after she did pass away and suddenly I'm on my own. We were courting for six years and married for 48 and so this affected me a lot. I'm on my own now."
Lucy from London
Lucy said: "It happened all very quickly. Within seven days, my mum was gone. Just like that. We missed it."
She went on: "It turned out that my mum was actually suffering from Covid and was already in a very bad way.
"She said can we go to the hospital tomorrow and I said no mama, we have to go now. We can't wait until tomorrow.
"We waited and waited and waited. And then a phone call came and it was a doctor, a consultant or a doctor, who called and I actually rushed because I thought ‘oh, they're calling me likely, probably, about the review of my mum’.
"And then she just announced that, ‘oh, I'm sorry to tell you but your mom has passed away’. I was expecting to go there and see her and discuss what the next treatments would be and all that and she just said ‘your mum has just passed away.’”
Youssef from the West Mids
Youssef, whose dad went to hospital in early 2021, said: "I think because we weren't really there. We weren't able to really influence the care in the way that we've done previously, where I think our input had made a huge difference to the outcome.
"The impression I got was that he was obviously quite unwell, but he was relatively stable. And then on the Friday we got called in to say look he is basically at the end, he's really deteriorated overnight and you should come in so we rushed in but by then it was too late already.
"By the time we got there he had already passed so that was, you know, of course it was a massive shock.
"It's left me both myself and my mum with a great amount of guilt, trauma and pain particularly about what happened."
Anjali from North West England
Anjali, who contracted Covid at the beginning of the pandemic while working on the orthogeriatric ward, said: "After seven days, I started spitting blood and I called the ambulance services. I went to the hospital and immediately I was seen by the consultant and the results were not looking very good at all.
"I was taken to ICU and intubated until after that I woke up after six weeks in the middle of June. I was so unwell that three times they tried to stop treatment and keep me comfortable. But slowly and steadily I improved. At the end of August 2021 I was able to go back to work.
"The worst impact this had was on my older, frail elderly parents who lived in India. My mother passed away in 2021 and my father followed her in 2022. So my illness had such a severe impact on my family, on my parents. And I always feel if this hadn't happened, my parents might still be there now."
Brenda from Northern Ireland
Brenda said: "My mum was one of the first in Northern Ireland to die. She died just at the start of lockdown on the 24th of March 2021. Mum was our world.
"Mum only went into hospital because of something really simple like her Warfarin levels were too high and unfortunately she acquired Covid in there.
"They told me Mum was doing well. I rang up to find out how she was doing. They couldn't give me any information but I said ‘well, I can't get up so you have to tell me’ and they said somebody will be in touch later on.
“And then just after the Prime Minister made his lockdown speech, I got a phone call to say Mum wasn't going to make it.
"I asked if any of us could be there, and they said 'no'. The next 12 hours were the hardest 12 hours of my life.
"She protected us for all our lives, and in the final hours when she really needed us, none of us could be there.”
Carole Anne from Scotland
Carole Anne said her 57-year-old taxi driver brother "caught Covid in the back of the taxi... five weeks. We couldn't see him,
nothing."
The only update we had was a call from the consultant.
"Eight people at the funeral. My mother, an 83 year old, sitting two metres away from us, sat in deathly silence. And then the next thing we hear is this old steel rattle tattle coming down the crematorium.
"And everyone turned around and looked and there was my brother getting rolled down in this tatty, old, steel trolley, the noise I'll never forget, that noise I'll never forget and that was it.
"Our lives are just broken. You try to go on through each day but I've lost everything."
Catriona from Northern Ireland
Catriona said: "We lost my 67 year old father to hospital acquired Covid on the 23rd of December 2020. The circumstances surrounding the lead up to his death and his eventual demise will haunt us for the rest of our lives.
"At the end of anyone's time, the most you can hope is to give your loved one a good death and we will forever carry the guilt that our Daddy was denied that.
"Our family were denied all the usual bereavement rituals, which has left us with the guilt that we couldn't pay tribute to our father, that those who loved him couldn't show their respect. It also left us as a family very isolated. For example, it was six months after Daddy died that my mother first got a human hug.
"And ultimately, in order for us to move on, we need to know that lessons will be learned and that future generations will be safeguarded from the heartache that we've had to suffer."
Hazel from London
Hazel said: "My daughter said that her dad wasn't sounding really well on the telephone and she wanted to go down to see him." They called an ambulance and were told it was "definitely" Covid.
"It took so long to get a doctor to talk to you as to what's happening. Is he getting any better? Is it getting any worse? And then we got the call that they had taken him to intensive care and my heart sank. They said they were gonna put him into an induced coma. And then we got the call back about 11:51 to say that he had passed.
"My anger is I don't know what really happened. What happened between him just being a ward with other people that had Covid to then being transferred to ICU. What was it? I don't have these answers yet. And this is frustrating for me.
"In Caribbean culture, I've got to say, when there's a funeral you're talking about hundreds of people easily. They were telling us 20 people could attend a funeral.
"We gave the best send off we could. But that's not the way he would have been sent off on a normal day. No way.”
Bereaved outside were sombre and angry
Outside the Inquiry, Victoria Deverson can’t hold back the tears as she cuddles a photograph of her smiling husband tight to her heart.
It’s been three years of hell since Simon, previously fit, died while hooked up to a ventilator.
The last time she saw the 59-year-old Middlesex University worker was hurried. There were no ambulances left to collect him from their home in Borehamwood, Herts, when his breathing grew laboured, so she and sons Luke and Miles bundled him into a car and took him to A&E themselves.
“We dropped him off but we weren’t allowed in with him,” she remembers, eyes filling up. A week later, Simon was dead. His heart failed after the virus rampaged through him and Victoria, 65, then learned the hospital had placed a Do Not Resuscitate order on him without consulting her.
She said: “They said the resuscitation process was too invasive. But they could have at least tried once.”
Before the doors opened yesterday, there was a sombre atmosphere among campaigners outside Dorland House in Paddington, central London.
Everyone had brought their own tissues, expecting an emotional day. There was much anger at the way the pandemic was handled. As well as questions answered, they want justice.
Larry Byrne, 62, from Windsor, Berks, is still horrified a hospital rang him just 90 minutes after his father Larry Snr died, asking for his body to be collected.
“They’d run out of space in the morgue,” he said.
“We were denied the basics while the Government partied and lied.”
Boris' last-ditch letter to Partygate probe
Boris Johnson sent a last-ditch letter to MPs probing whether he misled Parliament over Partygate.
The Privileges Committee was expected to publish its findings today but it is now believed they will not come until tomorrow.
It said it was dealing with submissions received from the former PM at 11.57pm on Monday.
A spokesman said: “A letter enclosing further representations from Mr Johnson was received. The committee is dealing with these and will report promptly.”
It is expected to find the Tory deliberately misled Parliament over lockdown parties in Downing Street.
Mr Johnson stood down as MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip in West London last week ahead of the findings.
David Campbell Bannerman, chairman of the Conservative Democracy Organisation, said the four Tory MPs on the seven-stong committee may be deselected.
He said: “It’s really outrageous how they behaved and they should be brought to account on this.”
The Conservative Democracy Organisation is critical of the way Rishi Sunak was appointed as Tory leader without a vote of members.
Mr Johnson provided a signed magnum of Bollinger rosé as a raffle prize for its conference last month and also sent a video message.
