The Scottish Government appeared to make “exactly the same mistakes twice” when dealing with the pandemic in 2020, an inquiry has heard.
Professor Paul Cairney questioned whether the Government learned from experience and said there was a “rhetoric of learning that does not match reality”.
The academic, a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Stirling, was asked to prepare an expert report for the UK Covid-19 Inquiry focusing on Scottish Government decision-making during the pandemic.
He was questioned about the “extremely extensive” report when giving evidence to the inquiry in Edinburgh on Thursday.
I think that the Scottish Government documents talk much more about learning than they demonstrate learning feeding into action
He said the Government did not appear to learn from experience in relation to the pandemic and lockdowns in 2020.
Prof Cairney said: “It you were to distil down all the evidence from the Scottish Government, you could turn it into a very simple convincing story which is we are a well co-ordinated learning organisation, we may not have been prepared for this new pandemic in spring 2020 but we are an effective organisation to the extent that we can learn and respond to subsequent pandemics much more effectively.
“I think that’s the Scottish Government position and I think there’s also witness statements from the former first minister (Nicola Sturgeon) and deputy first minister (John Swinney) that encapsulate that assertion of learning.
“The first minister says I told the Scottish Cabinet in December 2020 that essentially we have learned that you cannot wait for the problem to become a crisis, you have to act quickly, we learned that from the first lockdown.
“The deputy first minister says we’ve learned that in key cases sometimes only a major lockdown will do, these other measures are not going to work, so they both talk about learning from the previous experience in the sense that it would inform their future decisions, and that is a good learning organisation.
“But what I can’t then do is reconcile that with the fact that they appear to have made exactly the same mistakes twice.
“The first one was understandable because the virus was novel, lockdown in March was something that was profoundly different from what anyone had been used to, they clearly were not sure what would happen, how much people would adhere to the guidelines.
“But they state time and time again in their documents, we learned a lot from what happened during that lockdown and we’ve learned a lot about what this virus is – and yet they appear to have produced the same delays in response for the second lockdown as the first, so in my mind that does not exhibit pandemic preparedness in relation to continuously learning.”
Jamie Dawson KC, lead counsel to the current module of the inquiry, said it has heard evidence about Covid-19 mortality rates in subsequent years of the pandemic and hospitals being “overwhelmed” in 2021, and a “perfect storm” of issues.
He asked: “Are these features of the evidence consistent with your general proposition that the evidence doesn’t seem to suggest that you’ve seen, that lessons were learned during the pandemic such as to combat further waves and further devastation?”
Prof Cairney replied: “Yes I think that the Scottish Government documents talk much more about learning than they demonstrate learning feeding into action.”
He said he does not see evidence of longer term learning that will produce something to inform the next pandemic.
Inquiry chairwoman Baroness Heather Hallett asked: “Are you saying it’s translating the words into action?”
The witness replied: “Yes, I think the Scottish Government produces beautiful strategy documents, it has a wonderful language to describe how it wants to be, it does not have the same effective language for describing how it is.”
The inquiry continues.
