https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/too-little-too-late

Tens of thousands of lives were lost as PM embraced a ‘toxic and chaotic’ culture in No 10, Covid inquiry finds

BRITAIN’S pandemic response was “too little, too late” with tens of thousands of lives were lost as absent PM Boris Johnson embraced a “toxic and chaotic” culture in No 10, a damning Covid inquiry report found today.

More than 23,000 lives could have been saved if ministers imposed a lockdown just a week earlier in March 2020, Baroness Heather Hallett found.

She said that by the end of January 2020 it “should have been clear that the virus posed a serious and immediate threat” but all four British governments failed to act until it was “too late.”

Baroness Hallett described February 2020 as “a lost month” involving an “inexcusable” lack of urgency overall in government as Mr Johnson was too optimistic in his outlook in the early months of 2020.

By failing to tackle the “toxic and chaotic culture” in No 10 throughout the pandemic “and, at times, actively encouraging it — Mr Johnson reinforced a culture in which the loudest voices prevailed and the views of other colleagues, particularly women, often went ignored, to the detriment of good decision-making,” the retired judge and cross-bench peer said.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/too-little-too-late