James Gregory
Live editor

This was a damning report - and it's just the first of at least nine which will be released looking at how the UK responded to the coronavirus pandemic.

We've been going through Baroness Hallett's full 240-page report on the UK's preparedness across the course of this afternoon - and if you'd like to read the whole thing (as we've been doing) you can find it here, external.

We're now ending our live coverage, but you can read more on the report in our main story here, and more about the inquiry itself here.

Today’s page was written by Seher Asaf, Jake Lapham and Jamie Whitehead. It was edited by myself, Marita Moloney and Dulcie Lee.

We’re going to be closing our live page soon, but before we do let's take a look back on today's key developments:

• The report found significant flaws in preparations meant the virus caused more deaths and economic damage than it should have
• The report also said "groupthink" undermined pandemic planning and "labyrinthine" systems in the UK and across the devolved nations "need an overhaul"

• Covid inquiry chair Baroness Hallett said the UK government and devolved nations “failed their citizens” as they planned for the "wrong pandemic", referring to preparations for a new form of influenza
• Baroness Hallett made several recommendations, including a fundamental reform of the UK government and devolved nations' preparedness for civil emergencies
• Each organisation responsible for applying her recommendations is expected to set out how it plans to respond within six months
• Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the report confirmed "the UK was under-prepared for Covid-19", and that policy had "failed" citizens
• The Bereaved Families for Justice group welcomed the report but said it didn't go far enough on dealing with inequalities

More from Scotland and John Swinney tells our colleagues north of the border that the report "indicates a very strong amount of work that has to be done to strengthen pandemic preparedness", but says he thinks Scotland is better prepared for any future scenario.

Scotland's first minister pledges his government will consider in great detail the report’s recommendations, and that his government has taken a number of steps to strengthen Scotland's preparedness

The first minister adds he can only imagine today is an incredibly painful day for those who lost loved ones during the pandemic and he extends his sympathies to them..

Andrew Picken
BBC Scotland News

Image source, Getty Images

Let's return now to what the report had to say about Scotland's preparedness for the pandemic.

BBC Scotland reporter Andrew Picken joined other journalists this morning poring over the report at a media lock-in in central London.

It said both UK and Scottish governments “failed their citizens” by not doing enough to properly plan for the crisis.

It found Scottish ministers adopted flawed UK government resilience plans without adapting them for Scotland’s needs.

More than 235,000 people died in the UK with Covid listed as one of the causes on their death certificate - including more than 17,000 in Scotland - after the first cases were detected early in 2020.

Read more here.

At a news conference held by Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, Nathan Oswin from the TUC says "public health workers who risked their lives going into work every day were failed".

He goes on to say that the challenge now is to ensure that lessons are learned and mistakes are never repeated.

Oswin says there will be another pandemic one day and that means there is no time to waste.

"We need to engage with people outside Westminster," he continues, explaining: "We need to bring in voices of experts in communities, the voluntary sector and workforce."

We're now hearing from Phil Banfield, the chair of the BMA and a working doctor.

He says he wants to acknowledge how tough it's been for families exposed to the brutal realities of the pandemic to hear how ill -prepared the UK was.

He says public services and social care were running beyond capacity, and that public health services were fragmented and disinvested by the time the pandemic arrived.

Planning that had been done were abandoned, he adds.

He says future planning must take inequalities into account and calls for greater investment in public health services.

He adds that the new government must act on the findings of report, not just the recommendations, as the UK remains unprepared to respond to another pandemic or health emergency.

"We have a duty to those who died," he says.

Dr Saleyha Ashan says she was not surprised by the findings in the report released today.

Ahsan, a trained army medic who served in Bosnia, was working in a hospital in Bangor, Wales through the first two waves of Covid.

Her father, Ahsan-ul-Haq Chaudry, died in December 2020 after he contracted the virus, and she is now part of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK group.

She goes on to say there was nothing left in the tank by the time Covid hit and that "we could tell from the work we were doing that we were not prepared".

She adds that she hopes she does not have to stand outside the inquiry again crying and asks for those who were there - the bereaved and health care workers - to be heard.

We're now hearing from the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group, who earlier said that the report "doesn't go far enough", and that it was "extremely disappointing" vulnerable people were ignored.

They are joined by representatives from the British Medical Association and Trade Union Congress.

Press watch live at the top of this page to see what they have to say.

Image source, EPA

More from the prime minister now, who says the government will learn the lessons from the first UK Covid Inquiry report.

In a written statement, Keir Starmer says his "top priority" is to ensure "that the UK is prepared for a future pandemic, as well as the broadest range of potential risks facing our country".

Starmer adds that the government's first responsibility is to keep the public safe, and that he is "personally committed to each and every family that lost loved ones".

Earlier, the PM said the report confirmed that the UK was under-prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic.

Starmer is at the European Political Community summit today. You can follow our live coverage of that here.

The Local Government Association, which represents councils in England and Wales, is claiming that local expertise was "at times overlooked" by central government during the pandemic.

Reacting to inquiry's report, the association says councils "responded quickly to the pandemic" but that "too often" central government "hasn’t understood the role of local government".

The group also welcomes the report's recognition of the "important role" local government plays during a pandemic.

"It is vital that local government is at the heart of developing the response to the inquiry’s 10 recommendations," the statement says.

Told we had one of the best plans... but for the wrong pandemicpublished at 14:38 British Summer Time 18 July

14:38 BST 18 July

Nick Triggle
Health correspondent

The report is careful not to point the finger of blame at any particular individuals.

That will disappoint some, but it’s because what Covid Inquiry chair Baroness Hallett sets out is a detailed and damning account of systematic failure.

A complex, labyrinthine structure of committees and advisory groups had developed over the years.

Devolution, which led to health being devolved, was a factor in this.

The scientists – often so lauded during the pandemic – were guilty of groupthink.

And ministers didn’t do enough to challenge that.

But some of the problems were political too. Politicians may not be experts, but they set priorities. The pandemic plan dated back to 2011 and opportunities to update – particularly after a training exercise in 2016 – were missed. Why? One factor was the amount of planning going into a no-deal Brexit.

Austerity had also left public services over-stretched and lacking resilience to cope with an emergency.

A sense of exceptionalism played a role too. Told we had one of the best plans, we believed it. Except we had planned for the wrong pandemic. Lulled into a false sense of security by Swine Flu in 2009, we assumed the next pandemic would be mild and we could let it spread.

Image source, PA Media

John Swinney, the first minister of Scotland and leader of the SNP, says the Scottish government will "carefully assess" Baroness Hallett's recommendations and give responses "within the timescales that have been set out".

"The implementation of recommendations will require collaboration with our counterparts across the four nations," he said In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

He also expressed his sympathies to the families who lost loved ones during the pandemic.

A reminder, Scotland was responsible for its own response to the pandemic because health is a devolved area.

The National Pharmacy Association, which represents community pharmacists, says a clear lesson from the report is that the pharmacy network needs to be part of the planning for any future pandemic.

This will allow pharmacies to do what they do best and "provide community health care right on people’s doorsteps along with maintaining the core medicine supply and urgent care services", the group says.

The group adds that its "absolutely right that we strengthen our pandemic preparedness" and that the country needs a health system where pandemic preparations are "always on".

We've been getting further political reaction to the report with statements from the Lib Dems and the Green Party.

The Liberal Democrats say that the government must ensure that lessons of the "systematic and political failings" in preparing for the pandemic are "learnt swiftly".

Health spokesperson Daisy Cooper says the "damning findings confirm in black and white what we unfortunately already knew".

She goes on to add that "the country was let down during the pandemic" and "will provide little comfort for thousands of grieving families."

Meanwhile, the Green Party claims the UK is in a "worse position to deal with a pandemic today" because of the NHS crisis.

North Herefordshire MP Ellie Chowns says "we simply can never allow these failures to be repeated" and has urged the government to adopt the inquiry recommendations and also match the Greens' pledge to invest £30bn-a-year in the NHS by 2030.

A clear and scathing judgementpublished at 13:52 British Summer Time 18 July

13:52 BST 18 July

Adam Fleming
Newscast presenter

I am getting ready to record this afternoon's Newscast by speed-reading the first report from the Covid inquiry. It's taking me back to my the most significant time as a journalist and it's giving me the shivers.

The first few pages reveal Baroness Hallet's clear and scathing judgement: wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

The UK had the wrong system for dealing with emergencies. It prepared for the wrong type of pandemic. It had made the wrong choices about the nation's health and the NHS before Covid struck, which made the pandemic worse. Thousands of people died as a result.

The answer is to treat future pandemics - any massive emergency, really - as if it was a war with an enemy state. I don't think Baroness Hallett is recommending that the government spend the same on pandemic preparedness as the 2.5% of national income it is planning to spend on traditional defence, but she is advocating a massive change in how these threats should be approached.

Our political system will struggle to do this because it is so difficult to spend money on future problems at the expense of present ones. Baroness Hallett's critics will say she has too low an opinion of politicians and too high an expectation of what governments can do in the face of extraordinary events.

But maybe this is the inquiry's most powerful message of all: trying to fix the system is a way to make sure that all those deaths mean something. This is how the state can make up for failing us.

Newscast will be live at about 16:00 BST this afternoon.

Hugh Pym
Health editor

Deep into the report there are revealing observations on missed opportunities for ministers and officials to start planning for a possible coronavirus pandemic – and going back more than a decade and a half.

Back in 2003 SARS, a coronavirus, spread in some Asian countries.

The UK was hardly affected but a senior public health official warned that more contact tracing should be developed.

A planning exercise then stressed the importance of PPE and quarantining. The report says these were important lessons which, if heeded would have better prepared the UK to handle the Covid pandemic in 2020.

Similar exercises were carried out after the emergence of MERS, another coronavirus, in 2016.

South Korea and Taiwan were among countries which started scaling up testing and contract tracing then. The report concludes starkly that the UK's failure to respond meant that policy would only be developed once Covid had struck.

The Scottish Covid Bereaved group has also responded to the report.

Maggie Waterton tells BBC's Radio Scotland's Lunchtime Live Baroness Hallett has been as robust in her report and recommendations as expected.

Waterton says the inquiry and investigation thus far has been "without fear or favour".

She points out Baroness Hallett has been very direct with her findings, "in fact she said the UK and devolved administrations failed their citizens".

"Sadly we were not surprised about those findings about the lack of preparedness and resilience," she says.

"The systems, the policies, the procedures and the lack of planning let us all down."

More now from the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group.

Naomi Fulop, a professor who lost her mother to the virus, describes Baroness Harrett's report as "hard-hitting" and "clear-sighted", but says it doesn't go far enough in "how we can challenge, address and improve inequalities and capacity of public services".

"Even the best laid plans won’t save lives unless they address, rather than just account for, the conditions that led to our inability to respond quickly, equitably and effectively," she says.

She urges the government to conduct a cross-departmental audit into pandemic preparedness in its first 100 day and establish a Minister for Resilience and Preparedness.

The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group - formed of 7,000 members and set up in 2020 to ensure lessons were learned and not repeated - has also been reacting to the report's publication.

Spokesperson Elkan Abrahamson says the group is "delighted" that most of their recommendations have been taken on board to prevent "a disaster like the Covid pandemic ever happening again."

But he claims that the vulnerable had been "ignored" in the recommendations set out by Baroness Hallett, adding that it is "extremely disappointing" that the there are no proposals for dealing with racial inequality, health inequalities or the effects of austerity.

Abrahamson says the group will be speaking to the government and Baroness Hallett "to ask her to ensure that her crucial recommendations are carried out."

Image source, PA Media

We've also been getting reaction to the report from Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

He says it confirms "the UK was under-prepared for Covid-19", and that policy "failed" citizens of the UK.

"The safety and security of the country should always be the first priority," Starmer says in a statement.

"This government is committed to learning the lessons from the inquiry and putting better measures in place to protect and prepare us from the impact of any future pandemic".

Starmer extended sympathies to "all those who lost a loved one during that time," adding that the memories bought about by the inquiry will be very difficult for many people.