Via BBC News: Coronavirus: UK's pandemic planning an 'astonishing' failure, say MPs. Excerpt:
The government's failure to plan for the economic impact of a pandemic is "astonishing", a committee of MPs says.
The Commons Public Accounts Committee said the economic reaction to Covid-19 was rushed and the impact could be "long-term".
It added the Treasury waited until mid-March before deciding on the economic support schemes it would put in place.
But the government said it regularly tested its pandemic plans, which enabled a "rapid" response.
Last month, official figures showed that the UK economy shrank more than first thought between January and March, contracting 2.2% in the joint largest fall since 1979.
In its report, the Commons Public Accounts Committee said the government needed to "learn lessons" from its response and "ensure it doesn't repeat its mistakes again in the event of a second spike in infections - or another novel disease outbreak".
"We are astonished by the government's failure to consider in advance how it might deal with the economic impacts of a pandemic," it said.
The report noted the government undertook at three-day pandemic simulation exercise in 2016 known as Exercise Cygnus.
But the committee said the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy "was not even aware of the exercise", saying: "It is astounding that the government did not think about the potential impact on the economy."
And it said that the Treasury did not announce plans for "significant funding" to support businesses and individuals until the Budget on 11 March "and it did not become clear to the Treasury until the following week that a furlough scheme would be needed".
The first reported cases of coronavirus confirmed by the chief medical officer in England was on 31 January.
"The lack of prior thinking on the types of schemes that may be required led to a delay in implementation because the government needed to design the schemes from scratch, particularly in relation to the self-employed scheme where it lacked sufficient, reliable information on who the recipients should be, causing unnecessary uncertainty for businesses and individuals," the committee said.
