Nathan Williams
Live reporter

Thank you for joining us for our live coverage of day three of the UK's Covid inquiry public hearings.

The inquiry continues tomorrow and, as we've been telling you, next week we'll be hearing from senior politicians including former PM David Cameron, as well as current deputy PM Oliver Dowden and Chancellor Jeremey Hunt.

Today's page was brought to you by our health editor Hugh Pym, health reporter Jim Reed, Heather Sharp, Ece Goksedef and myself.

Jim Reed
Health reporter, BBC News

That's it then for the third day of witness hearings in the Covid inquiry. More evidence will be taken tomorrow before the first senior politicians, including former Prime Minister David Cameron, appear in front of Baroness Hallett next week.

A quick recap of what was said today:

Bruce Mann, a former civil servant in the cabinet officer and Professor David Alexander from University College London, presented their joint report on the structures and systems which should have been in place in a national emergency like Covid.

They found that planning for a “novel diseases pandemic” like coronavirus was "wholly inadequate" and said it was clear that both the health and social care sectors in England were liable to be overwhelmed.

Both men would like to see a radical rewrite of the UK’s emergency plans going forwards saying a future pandemic is "inevitable".

This morning we heard from Prof David Heymann, now at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, but one of the top officials in the World Health Organisation in 2003 when the first Sars outbreak hit countries in Asia.

Prof Heymann said that Sars and another related disease, Mers, had a "profound effect" on countries like Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. He believes those countries were more successful than the UK and other European countries in containing the early spread of Covid in 2020 as a result, noting "much, much lower" mortality rates.

That brings to an end day three of the Covid Inquiry's public hearings.

• Infectious diseases expert and former senior WHO official Professor David Heymann spoke about the 2003 Sars outbreak, saying it had a "profound effect" on the way many Asian countries dealt with Covid - noting "much, much lower" mortality rates in some
• He also called for the UK to rejoin the EU’s Horizon scientific research
• Professor David Alexander, a risk and disaster expert from UCL, said another pandemic caused by a new disease is "an inevitability" and that "large elements" of the Covid pandemic were "entirely predictable"
• Former senior civil servant Bruce Mann said preparations for a no-deal Brexit took up time and energy that could have been used for pandemic planning. He criticised the UK government's emergency plan - saying it "started in the wrong place" and its proposed actions were "too slow".
• Both Alexander and Mann agreed they wanted to see a "wholesale, radical, rewriting" of the government's approach to emergency planning
• Asked about the conclusions of a report written by the pair, Mann also says the UK's pandemic planning was "poor and inadequate"

Asked whether it was clear that health and social care sectors were liable to be overwhelmed, Mann says this was the "clear advice", not only from the Hine Review into swine flu in 2010, but also appeared in officials' advice to ministers.

This "has to raise serious questions about whether the plan would have worked," he adds.

Is radical innovation and change required, they are asked. Both reply "yes".

Man says: "Yes, in structures and yes in the detail in which plans, procedures, - whatever is issued from organisations and central government - are followed through in detail to make sure they will work."

Jim Reed
Health reporter, BBC News

Bruce Mann and Professor David Alexander have been asked about the conclusions of their report into pandemic planning.

It found that preparedness for an influenza pandemic in England, and for areas that were UK wide, was poor – although evidence suggests that it will have been stronger in Scotland and, especially, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Mann said he carried out an assessment looking at the key components needed to respond to a pandemic and concluded that the "vast majority of those were poor or non-existent".

"It led to my overall conclusion that overall preparedness was inadequate," he told the inquiry.

For a "novel disease pandemic" like coronavirus, as opposed to influenza, the response was also "wholly inadequate", the report concluded.

It was clear that both the health and social care sectors were liable to be overwhelmed, the two witnesses found.

We've been hearing a lot of detailed discussion this afternoon about the way parts of government and other bodies should work together in an emergency - with reference to a fiendishly complex organigram.

The big questions underlying this first phase - or module - of the inquiry are all about how the government plans for a "catastrophic emergency".

Lawyers representing the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice group believe this module is the most important of the six - if the UK had been better prepared, some of the difficult decisions in terms of restrictions may not have had to be taken, they say.

Many experts agree the UK - and much of western Europe and North America - were found wanting during the pandemic.

A lack of testing infrastructure meant community testing was abandoned in March 2020 just as Covid was taking off. And it was May 2020 before a large scale national contact tracing system could be set up.

Jeremy Hunt, who was chair of the House of Commons' health committee during the pandemic, described it as a "major blind spot".

Image source, PA Media

The inquiry will ask questions to some big names next week.

Sir Chris Whitty, the UK government's chief medical adviser during the pandemic, and Sir Patrick Vallance, chief scientific adviser, will be the two major experts, they will be asked about government decisions from January 2020 onwards.

David Cameron, UK PM from 2010 to 2016, will be questioned on resilience planning during his time in office.

George Osborne, chancellor during that period, will answer questions on NHS funding.

The current Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will appear too. He was health secretary from 2012 to 2018, at a time when a major pandemic planning exercise was carried out focussed on flu.

Oliver Dowden, the current deputy prime minister, will also be called.

The public inquiry into the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic started on Tuesday.

It was launched by Boris Johnson in May 2021 and it will cover decision-making in Westminster and the devolved administrations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

You might be wondering what the overall aim of a public inquiry is? Well, it aims to respond to "public concern" about events - in this case.

Any inquiry has the power to make people appear as witnesses, and to provide evidence. Inquiries are expected to publish conclusions and may make recommendations.

Jim Reed
Health reporter, BBC News

Image source, Covid Inquiry

Both witnesses are being asked about the structure of the emergency response system in the UK, and whether it needs to change in the future.

Bruce Mann says that, because of the increased risk of climate change, some of the most significant emergencies may start with communications and electricity failures, along with an increased risk of flooding.

Prof Alexander says that, if the electricity system goes down, he can think of "about 38" different consequences which would stop us living our lives as normal.

"Just the impact on banking could freeze up almost everything," he adds. "There are plenty of opportunities for critical infrastructure failure to be absolutely central to the [future] emergency."

Hugh Pym
Health Editor, BBC News

Image source, Covid Inquiry

The two witnesses have criticised current UK emergency plans.

Bruce Mann said the UK Government Resilience Framework published in December 2022 started in the "wrong place" and may have had a lot of good ideas but they were "not brought together in a single roadmap".

Professor Alexander said attempts had been made to tinker but the British civil protection system was not a system and relied too much on the military.

Asked by inquiry counsel Hugo Keith KC whether they were inviting a wholesale radical rewriting of the strategic approach going forward, both said "yes".

Jim Reed
Health reporter, BBC News

In the decade before Covid struck, the World Health Organization (WHO) described the UK as "amongst the leaders worldwide in preparing for a pandemic, external".

Asked about that assessment, Prof Alexander describe that glowing assessment as "simply wrong".

"It didn't match up to the results that came out in terms of comparing the British response to that of other countries," he said.

Hugh Pym
Health Editor, BBC News

Professor David Alexander says he was at a Red Cross symposium in 2008 and an infectious diseases expert gave a lecture beginning. "My job is to tell you something you don't want to know and ask you to spend money you haven’t got on something you don’t think will happen."

The expert, he said, then went on to describe a viral pandemic and in considerable detail.

Alexander then said "it was quite clear this was going to happen and large elements of it were entirely predictable".

Jim Reed
Health reporter, BBC News

Image source, Covid Inquiry

Professor David Alexander and Bruce Mann are being questioned by the lead lawyer for the Covid inquiry, Hugo Keith KC.

Prof David Alexander says there are “most definitely” lessons to be learned from the Covid pandemic. But he says this means actual change is required.

He questions whether that has been the case with previous disasters and emergencies, giving the example of the 2005 London bombings which laid bare the need for greater coordination between the different emergency services.

“Twelve years later, in the Manchester arena bombing, there was exactly the same problem. So that particular lesson, in terms of savings lives, had not been learned,” he added.

The hearing has restarted after the lunch break.

The inquiry is hearing from two witnesses:

• David Alexander, a professor in the Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction at University College London.
• Bruce Mann, who was a civil servant at the Ministry of Defence and Cabinet Office from 1979 to 2016 and a former director of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat.

You can watch the hearing by clicking on the "play" button at the top of this page. Stay with us for live updates.

Image source, Reuters

We'll bring you more updates from the inquiry hearing when it resumes after the lunch break.

But for now, here's a look at some of the things the Covid Inquiry, led by Baroness Heather Hallett, is expected to look at - the biggest and most controversial aspects of the government's response, including:

• The decision to delay lockdown at the very start of the pandemic, which some experts say cost thousands of lives
• The move to abandon testing in the community in March 2020
• The approach to care homes - where 40% of Covid deaths occurred in the first three months - including the lack of testing, PPE shortages and the mass discharge of patients from hospital when Covid first hit
• Whether too many restrictions were imposed as the pandemic progressed
• The government’s policy towards schools which closed to most pupils in March 2020 and then again in January 2021

Ashitha Nagesh
BBC News Community Affairs Correspondent

In 2021, Matt Fowler drew a small red heart on a patch of wall by the Thames, in front of St Thomas’s Hospital and directly facing the Houses of Parliament.

Inside were the initials “IF” - Ian Fowler. He did it in memory of his dad, who had died a year earlier of Covid-19. He was 56 years old.

“It’s about change,” he says, of the Covid Inquiry.

“It’s about looking at all of the mistakes that we made during the pandemic... and putting something in place to prevent those from reoccurring.”

For Matt, it’s also important to pay tribute those who died. Since he drew that heart two years ago, more than 200,000 other hearts have surrounded it - each representing someone who died in the pandemic. The wall has been recognised as a national memorial to the victims of Covid-19.

“Dad’s heart was the first one, but it’s not big and flashy. Dad’s heart is a small part of a much bigger tragedy,” Matt tells me.

“Although Dad was a big part of my life, and the centre of my little world, all of these other hearts represent the centre of everybody else’s.”

The inquiry hearing is breaking for lunch now and while they do, here's a quick reminder of what's going on.

It's day three of the public hearings for UK's Covid inquiry, which over the coming months will hear from key politicians, scientists, unions, health and care organisations, Covid bereavement groups.

The aim is to learn lessons by looking back over what happened during the pandemic - it's not about finding people guilty or innocent.

This first phase, or module, is one of six, and is examining how prepared the UK was for the pandemic.

This morning, Prof David Heymann of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, former chairman of Public Health England and senior WHO official, described how the experience of the Sars outbreak in many Asian countries had a "profound effect" on the way they dealt with Covid.

Prof David Alexander, an expert in risk and disaster reduction at University College London said a future pandemic from a new virus is "an inevitability".

We expect to hear more from him and former senior civil servant Bruce Mann this afternoon.

Hugh Pym
BBC News Health Editor

Another candid statement from Professor David Alexander, expert on risk and disaster reduction.

Addressing the issue of whether the British government does keep the public safe within the limits of its competency, he said “not sufficiently”.

Asked whether this referred to the current structures he said yes and added that the government could do more and better in providing safety for its population.

He said one weakness of the British system, though not referring to devolved administrations, was the lack of an intermediate layer between central and local government.

Jim Reed
Health reporter, BBC News

Interesting point from Professor David Alexander about the nature of disasters and emergencies today.

He said the UK could, in one way, be considered "lucky" in the pandemic in that it didn’t have to contend with a second major emergency - such as widespread flooding - at the same time.

He gave the example of three other countries which had to cope with major earthquakes in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.

He said that all large disasters in the 21st century should be considered to be what he describes as "cascading disasters" – where authorities might have to deal with a series of concurrent events akin to a "toppling of dominoes".

Jim Reed
Health reporter, BBC News

In their joint report, both witnesses said planning for a possible no-deal Brexit from 2016 onwards had the "inevitable" consequence of taking up time and energy which could have been used for pandemic planning.

"Let me be clear, this is not a political but an administration point," said Bruce Mann.

He said he also recognised there were some benefits in planning for a no-deal exit from the EU – especially on supply chains and the capacity to manage a crisis.