23 April 2020
The Lessons
A report.
By John Watson
The figures do not look good. The UK, a prosperous and successful country with a population of just over 65 million, has suffered almost 10% of world fatalities from Covid 19. Why? In due course there will no doubt be a public enquiry headed by an important judicial figure which will sift the evidence with the thoroughness and impartiality of a Martin Moore-Bick. That is right and proper, but it will take a lot of time and meanwhile both critics of, and apologists for, the government will honour Aristotle’s rule that nature abhors a vacuum by pouring in a toxic mixture of false news and innuendo as they attempt to exploit the void for their own political ends. So let us try to pre-empt them a little. On what areas is the enquiry’s report likely to focus?
The first is the Government’s slowness in recognising the seriousness of the position. Clearly they just did not get it until they saw the modelling published by Imperial College, London, on 16 March with its prediction of 500,000 deaths in the UK, even without taking into account the overwhelming of the healthcare system. That woke them up with a vengeance but by then it was late in the day with 6,470 deaths already confirmed worldwide. As the success of a lockdown depends on how early it is imposed, the delay has clearly contributed to the UK’s death toll. So what are the policy conclusions from this? That politicians should be wiser? That they should not expect unpleasant news to go away? That they should worry more? Hmm, history is littered with similar errors and, whatever regrets those involved may have, similar mistakes will continue to be made until electorates make caution in the face of possible disaster a crucial ingredient of success at the ballot box.
The second is the sweating of assets. Readers will remember that a year or two ago attempts to retimetable the railways cause complete chaos, partly because work on certain lines encountered unexpected ground conditions. One interesting point which came out of that was that Britain has an exceptionally high level of use of its railway lines by international standards. Very efficient when they work: very disastrous if some gremlin gets into the system, because the high usage leaves little flexibility to adapt. One can see how the intense exploitation of the network led to such chaos.
There is a similar theme in analyses of the banking crisis of 2008. Banks had sophisticated computer programs which gave very precise assessments of risk so those directing them thought margins of safety could be safely cut. Exploit the capacity for risk by aggressive product structuring, they said. The result: disaster (and if you have not read Kevin Roger’s excellent book Why Aren’t They Shouting? which explains the dynamics of this, I suggest you put it on your lockdown reading list). They had believed in their systems too much.
This isn’t just about the desire for profit but, rather, something more fundamental. Throughout the public and private sectors, managers seek to do the most they can with the assets available to them. Businesses are highly geared. Buildings are put up using the cheapest suitable materials. Government departments trim their workforces. Switchboards become increasingly automated. In the case of the National Health Service the pressures for this were increased by austerity but actually they would be there anyway. Given extra resources, management would have been expected to do more with them, not treat them as a cushion of fat which could be left in the system.
Trimming things creates exposure. And if you trim the wrong things that is even worse. Trimming pandemic response capacity is a little like trimming the armed services or the flood protections. If you are lucky you get your rewards for limiting expenditure which proved unnecessary. But if not…
The reaction to the 2008 banking crisis was to build fat back into the system by increasing capital adequacy. Could something be done in other areas to prevent them being managed too “efficiently”? An annual audit of disaster protection perhaps.
The third area is delivery. Once the politicians had realised what was needed there seems to have been a gap between what they promised and what they could actually deliver. From testing kits to protective equipment, there were shortages on the ground, sometimes in the very areas where the public were being told that sufficient quantities had been purchased. At one time it was even suggested that the Prime Minister had himself been on the phone talking to manufacturers of ventilators, surely not the ideal chain of communication. Actually none of this is surprising. The public sector is not used to emergency procurement so why should that be one of its skills? Military experts say that on going to war you should fire all the old generals whose skills are in peacetime administration and replace them with the daring and the young who can deliver an aggressive campaign. It is no doubt this thinking which has inspired the government to bring in Lord Deighton, mastermind of the London Olympics, to take charge of the provision of protective equipment. Let’s hope he is as good as he is cracked up to be.
What lessons are to be learned here? Should the civil service contain a number of disaster managers, who can step in when things need energy and acumen? Perhaps, although one can see them clashing with the politicians in ordinary times. Would it be better to have a pool of them sitting in the Lords available to be called on when the need arose?
There is plenty to think about and hopefully the debate will result in some positive changes. At the moment, however, there is a more immediate worry. Will the government’s concerns that it did too little at the start of the pandemic result in it becoming overcautious and doing too much at the end? Could we face a lock down which is longer than is strictly necessary?
