Last week saw Jeremy Hunt announce the 2024 budget. Despite the UK having suffered over 233,791 deaths to Covid 19, unsurprisingly none of the lessons we should have learned were reflected in the budget. Not the funding needed for the NHS and social care, not the funding to reduce health inequalities, not the funding to ensure we are prepared for the next pandemic.

Without proper funding for our public services we will be just as vulnerable (if not more so) when the next pandemic hits.

In October the Institute for Government warned us that Government spending plans mean ‘all services other than children’s social care could be performing worse in 2027/28 than on the eve of the pandemic’ (https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/performance-tracker-2023 

If Jeremy Hunt had any interest in learning  from the Government’s mistakes during the pandemic, he would be ensuring that our public services, particularly health and social care services, are adequately resourced and staffed to respond when the next pandemic hits, and fit for the purpose of reducing the health inequalities which shaped the UK’s experience of the pandemic. 

The UK suffered one of the worst death tolls in Western Europe, despite being one of the world’s wealthiest countries, because our public services are on their knees. The £3.4bn towards modernising IT systems at the NHS that Hunt announced won’t scratch the surface of what is needed. 

We know that there will be another pandemic. Having appeared at the UK Covid 19 Inquiry, Jeremy Hunt knows this, and he knows that our public services remain underfunded, underprepared and under protected from Covid 19.

2024 is going to be a critical year in the fight to make sure the mistakes made when Covid-19 struck are never repeated again. Later this year the inquiry will announce its first recommendations from module one, on how the Government can prepare for the next pandemic. All of the major parties must commit to putting these into action regardless of who wins the next election. 

We have the opportunity to make massive strides in ensuring that the horrific scenes of 2020 and 2021 are never repeated again. Please support us to help in our fight to ensure that in the future others never have to go through the pain that we did: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/covid-bereaved-must-be-heard-at-the-covid-inquiry