2. The UK government’s response to the pandemic and why it is failing

At the beginning of 2021, the UK had the highest COVID death rate in the world. By 20 January 2021, COVID had killed more than 100,000 people in the UK, with 1,820 more deaths reported that day alone.

At this point, unions described the NHS as “a system under siege”, with overwhelmed and exhausted NHS staff “crying out for better protection” as they treated tens of thousands of COVID patients.

In the early stages of the pandemic, an analysis by Stirling University professor Andrew Watterson for the Hazards Campaign found that a fatal combination of missed opportunities, ignored warning signs, and a failure to stop non-essential work had made the coronavirus crisis “bigger and more deadly” in the UK.

A damning report from MPs and peers, The All Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus: interim report December 2020, confirmed union criticism of the government’s handling of the crisis and suggested it had failed to learn lessons from its previous mistakes as a second wave of the virus took hold.