Jeremy Hunt has apologised for failures in the UK's pandemic preparations highlighted by the Covid Inquiry.

Asked by the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg whether he would like to apologise for what went wrong, the former health secretary said: "Absolutely.

"I was one of the many ministers, many officials, many scientists who were part of a groupthink where we overprepared for pandemic flu, we didn't think about other types of pandemic.
"And we should have challenged that groupthink.

"I apologise unreservedly to the families. That was the most terrible tragedy what happened to this country during Covid.

READ MORE: Scotland and UK not properly prepared for pandemic, Inquiry finds

"And I think, by the way, the report has some very sensible recommendations including simplifying the structures of preparing for these kinds of emergencies and I very much hope the Government adopts them."

Last week the UK wide public inquiry found that both the Scottish and UK governments “failed their citizens" by not adequately preparing for Covid-19.

In its first report into preparedness for a pandemic, the UK Covid-19 Inquiry said there was a “damaging absence of focus” on the measures and infrastructure that would be needed to deal with a fast-spreading disease, even though a coronavirus outbreak at pandemic scale “was foreseeable”.

It also found Scottish ministers adopted flawed UK government resilience plans without adapting them for Scotland’s needs.

READ MORE: Scottish Government accused of ‘corporate homicide’ on Covid

A major flaw, according to the inquiry, was the lack of “a system that could be scaled up to test, trace and isolate” people.

The report added: “Despite reams of documentation, planning guidance was insufficiently robust and flexible, and policy documentation was outdated, unnecessarily bureaucratic and infected by jargon.”

The inquiry said it had “no hesitation” in concluding that the “processes, planning and policy of the civil contingencies structures within the UK government and devolved administrations and civil services failed their citizens”.

The Covid inquiry, which is being chaired by Baroness Heather Hallett, published its 217-page report last Thursday.

She said lessons must be learned because, “unless we are better prepared”, the next pandemic will “bring with it immense suffering and huge financial cost, and the most vulnerable in society will suffer the most.”

She added that the belief that the UK was one of the best-prepared countries in the world to respond to a pandemic was “dangerously mistaken” and in reality, the UK was “ill-prepared”.

She added: “There were serious errors on the part of the state and serious flaws in our civil emergency systems. This cannot be allowed to happen again.”

The report's findings included:

– The UK “prepared for the wrong pandemic”, namely a flu pandemic. Furthermore, this flu plan was “inadequate for a global pandemic of the kind that struck”.

– In the years leading up to the pandemic, “there was a lack of adequate leadership, co-ordination and oversight”. Ministers “failed to challenge sufficiently the advice they did receive from officials and advisers”, there was “groupthink” and they did not receive a broad enough range of scientific opinion and policy options.

– Scientific committees advising ministers may have been affected by “groupthink”, there was too little challenge to what was said, experts were limited in what they could advise, and “expert advice on pandemic preparedness was overly weighted in favour of biomedical science”.

– The institutions and structures responsible for emergency planning throughout government were “labyrinthine” in how complex they were.

Following the report's publication First Minister John Swinney said: "The Scottish Government will carefully consider the recommendations made by Baroness Hallett in the UK Covid-19 Inquiry report and provide detailed responses to the recommendations within the timescales that have been set out.

“Families across the country lost loved ones to the Covid-19 pandemic, and we offer our deepest sympathies to all those who have experienced pain and grief as a result.

“It is with their loss in mind that we continue our efforts to make effective, practical and measurable improvements in pandemic planning and preparedness.

“The implementation of recommendations will require collaborative action with our counterparts across the four nations, and the Scottish Government is committed to working together, at all levels, in a way which allows us to best prevent, prepare for and respond to future civil emergencies.”

Responding to the report, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said ministers will "carefully consider" Lady Hallett's recommendations, adding it is a "top priority" for his Government.

He said: "The Government's first responsibility is to keep the public safe, and as Prime Minister I am personally committed to each and every family that lost loved ones, and whose lives were changed forever, that this Government will learn the lessons from the inquiry."

There were more than 235,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK up to the end of 2023, including more than 17,000 in Scotland.

Last week the failings were branded as ‘corporate homicide’ by Aamer Anwar, who is the lead solicitor for Scottish Covid Bereaved.