On November 21, 2025, the United Kingdom’s Covid-19 Inquiry released a searing 760-page report that has sent shockwaves through government and society alike. The second part of the inquiry’s findings, focused on political decisions during the pandemic, paints a bleak picture of how the UK’s leadership—across all four nations—failed to recognize the true scale and urgency of the Covid-19 threat. The report’s conclusions are damning: as many as 23,000 deaths might have been avoided if the first national lockdown had been imposed just one week earlier.
Launched in June 2022 by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Covid-19 Inquiry was a response to mounting pressure from bereaved families and the public for a full accounting of the government’s actions during the pandemic. As reported by BBC News, Johnson promised the inquiry would put the government’s pandemic response “under the microscope.” Led by former judge and crossbench peer Baroness Heather Hallett, the inquiry has held public hearings across London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast since June 2023, gathering testimony from hundreds of witnesses and reviewing more than 7,000 documents, including WhatsApp messages, emails, and confidential files.
The findings of this latest report are particularly grim for Johnson and his top team. According to Politico, the government’s response was “too little, too late.” The report highlights that warnings from China were dismissed for weeks, and a combination of “incompetence and over-optimism at the heart of government” led to fatal delays. February 2020 was described by inquiry chair Heather Hallett as a “lost month,” with no Cobra emergency meetings chaired by Johnson during the crucial half-term break. Scientific models cited in the report suggest that a nationwide lockdown on March 16, 2020, could have halved the number of deaths in the first wave—but by the time the lockdown was enacted a week later, it was already too late.
The inquiry did not limit its criticism to the timing of lockdowns. It also scrutinized the culture at the heart of government, describing it as “toxic and chaotic.” Johnson was said to have “reinforced” this environment, where the views of colleagues—particularly women—were often ignored, to the detriment of sound decision-making. The report singles out Johnson’s special adviser at the time, Dominic Cummings, for contributing to this culture. One “particularly disgraceful” WhatsApp message from Cummings—"we cannot keep dealing with this horrific meltdown of the British state while dodging stilettos from that c***"—was cited as symptomatic of the offensive, sexualized, and misogynistic language that permeated Downing Street.
This toxic culture, the report argues, had real-world consequences. According to The Times, the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland were “overly reliant” on Westminster and failed to act with sufficient speed. For instance, the Welsh First Minister, Mark Drakeford, chose to attend St David’s Day celebrations in Brussels on March 4, 2020, instead of joining a Welsh Cabinet meeting—despite the first Covid case in Wales being identified just days before. In Northern Ireland and Scotland, Covid-19 was only discussed as “any other business” in meetings until late February 2020.
Public trust was further undermined by the so-called “Partygate” events, in which officials and ministers—including those at No. 10—were found to have broken lockdown rules. Helen MacNamara, then deputy cabinet secretary, told the inquiry she “would find it hard to pick one day when the regulations were followed properly inside” No. 10. According to Hallett, this rule-breaking “undermined public confidence in decision-making and significantly increased the risk of people not complying with the rules designed to protect them.”
Flawed scientific advice also played a role in the government’s delayed response. The report notes that until mid-March 2020, chief medical officer Chris Whitty and chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance advised against early restrictions, fearing the public would tire of compliance if measures were imposed too soon. However, they underestimated the risk of the NHS being overwhelmed. The lack of adequate infection and hospital data at the time further complicated decision-making. Many ministers struggled to grasp the technical details, with Johnson in particular described as “bamboozled” by the statistics, according to Vallance’s notes.
The inquiry has heard from a wide range of witnesses, including Boris Johnson himself, who began his testimony in December 2023 by apologizing for the “pain and the loss and the suffering” experienced during the pandemic. While Johnson admitted that “there were unquestionably things we should have done differently,” he insisted that ministers had done their “level best” under difficult circumstances. Former Chancellor Rishi Sunak also gave evidence, apologizing to “all those who suffered... as a result of the actions that were taken,” but denying that his Eat Out to Help Out scheme contributed to higher infections and deaths. Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock was critical of the overall pandemic strategy and the culture within government, blaming Dominic Cummings for much of the toxicity. Cummings, in turn, described a “dysfunctional” government and expressed regret over his own actions, such as his controversial trip to Barnard Castle during lockdown.
Devolved leaders, including former Scottish First Ministers Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf, former Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford, and Northern Ireland’s Michelle O’Neill and Baroness Foster, have all given evidence to the inquiry. The report found that none of the national cabinets acted with “sufficient speed” as the crisis unfolded, and a “lack of trust” between Johnson and the devolved administrations’ First Ministers colored decision-making throughout the pandemic.
Beyond the political drama, the inquiry has made a concerted effort to put the loss and suffering of ordinary people at its heart. Baroness Hallett’s “Every Story Matters” project collected over 47,000 personal accounts of Covid by May 2025, ensuring that the voices of bereaved families and those affected by the pandemic are heard. The inquiry’s first report, published in July 2024, had already concluded that the UK was “ill-prepared for dealing with a catastrophic emergency, let alone the coronavirus pandemic,” and called for sweeping reforms in emergency planning.
In total, Hallett has made 19 recommendations in this latest report, adding to the 10 issued previously, with more to come as the inquiry continues its work into 2026. The government is not obliged to accept the recommendations, but the public pressure for accountability and reform is mounting. The question posed at the start of this phase—“Did the government serve the people well, or did it fail them?”—now seems to have a clear, if sobering, answer.
The UK’s Covid-19 Inquiry has exposed systemic failures, missed opportunities, and a culture of dysfunction at the highest levels of government. As more reports are expected in the coming years, the hope is that these hard lessons will not be forgotten—and that never again will the nation be so unprepared for a crisis of this magnitude.
