The government should prepare for future pandemics by holding regular NHS war games across the health service, Labour will say on Tuesday.
In a speech the shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth will accuse the Conservatives of having “weakened our defences” by failing to plan properly for outbreaks like Covid-19.
And he will urge the creation of a new Office for Budget Responsibility-style watchdog to rate ministers’ pandemic preparedness in future.
The party says the NHS went into the coronavirus crisis with 17,000 fewer beds than in 2010 and with a smaller health workforce compared to other advanced economies.
The opposition’s most eye-catching recommendation is for regular “germ-games” that would test the state’s pandemic defences and help identify weak points.
“Being on the back foot has cost lives. Labour would get on the front foot against future threats. Future resilience against pandemics isn’t a choice. It’s a necessity,” Mr Ashworth is expected to say at the speech to left-wing think-tank IPPR.
“This pandemic has been devastating. Our NHS staff are exhausted, families are fatigued, over 120,000 have died and we’re suffering a deep economic hit.
Inside Politics newsletter
The latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekday
Inside Politics newsletter
The latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekday
“Our vaccination programme is the light at the end of the tunnel, but with experts warning we are in an ‘era of pandemics’, this is no time for complacency. Viruses more deadly or contagious than Covid-19, or resistant to antibodies, could emerge. Pandemic threats are real and must be reduced.”
Warning that Boris Johnson’s government “ignored the warnings and weakened our defences”, the shadow health secretary will claim that the Tories “left our country vulnerable and exposed when this pandemic hit”.
Labour shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth
(Getty Images)
“Given we know the scale of the risks, it would be unforgivable to be on the back foot again,” he will say.
“Governments rightly invest in defence planning. Practising for pandemics should be no different.
“Just as military leaders train their forces by ‘war games’, ministers should regularly ‘germ-game’ to prepare themselves and the country for the next pandemic. And government plans should be independently assessed and reported to parliament.”
UK news in pictures
Show all 50
UK news in pictures
8 March 2021
Students take Lateral Flow Tests for coronavirus at the Jewellery Quarter Academy in Birmingham in the West Midlands, as pupils in England return to school for the first time in two months as part of the first stage of lockdown easing
PA
UK news in pictures
7 March 2021
Nurses and NHS workers from the campaign group NHS Workers Say No, and Unite’s Guys and St Thomas Hospital Union branch, hold a socially distanced protest outside Downing Street in London over the proposed 1% pay rise from the Government
PA
UK news in pictures
6 March 2021
Rangers fans outside the stadium after the Scottish Premiership match at Ibrox Stadium, Glasgow
PA
UK news in pictures
5 March 2021
People go for a walk at The Dream a sculptor in Sutton Manor, St Helens, Merseyside, on a clear Spring day
PA
UK news in pictures
4 March 2021
Health Secretary Matt Hancock during a visit to the Centre for Virus Research at Glasgow University in Glasgow
PA
UK news in pictures
3 March 2021
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak outside 11 Downing Street, London, before heading to the House of Commons to deliver his Budget
PA
UK news in pictures
2 March 2021
A train rounds the coast and heads towards the Carbis Bay Estate hotel and beach, which is set to be the main venue for the upcoming G7 summit
Getty
UK news in pictures
1 March 2021
Newborn lambs in a field at A J Thompson & Sons farm on the Romney Marsh near Lydd in Kent on the first day of meteorological spring
PA
UK news in pictures
28 February 2021
People walking on the beach in Scarborough, North Yorkshire
PA
UK news in pictures
27 February 2021
The coffin of Captain Tom Moore is being carried members of the Armed Forces at Bedford Crematorium in Bedford
EPA
UK news in pictures
26 February 2021
A dog stands on rocks as the sun rises behind it at New Brighton beach, Wirral
PA
UK news in pictures
25 February 2021
Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds delivers a pre-Budget speech to the Institute of Global Prosperity at Labour Party headquarters in London
PA
UK news in pictures
24 February 2021
Britain’s Health Secretary Matt Hancock looks on outside Downing Street in London, Britain
REUTERS
UK news in pictures
23 February 2021
Two surfers make their way into the sea off of Boscombe beach in Dorset
PA
UK news in pictures
22 February 2021
Crocuses bloom outside Trinity College in Cambridge
PA
UK news in pictures
21 February 2021
Street art adorns many of the streets and walls around the Digbeth area of Birmingham
PA
UK news in pictures
20 February 2021
Parts of Callander in Stirlingshire flooded after the River Teith burst its banks
PA
UK news in pictures
19 February 2021
The sun rises over St Mary’s Lighthouse, Northumberland
PA
UK news in pictures
18 February 2021
Cars drive along the A1101 in Welney, Norfolk, which is passable again after two months submerged by floodwater
PA
UK news in pictures
17 February 2021
Professor Green announces Tideway’s new 25km Super Sewer is ‘Heading East’, marking a major stage in the construction of the tunnel, as two giant Tunnel Boring Machines link up to break through into Bermondsey and commence tunnelling towards East London. Once completed, the sewer system will prevent millions of tonnes of raw sewage entering the Thames
PA
UK news in pictures
16 February 2021
man holds up signs reading “I LOST MY JOB!!” and “BORIS, WHO IS GOING TO PAY THIS BILL? I DON’T HAVE ANY MONEY TO PAY MY CREDIT CARD” at the window of his hotel room at the Radisson Blu hotel in London
Getty
UK news in pictures
15 February 2021
Passengers arriving at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 are escorted by security personal to buses. From today, people arriving from 33 “red list” countries, including South Africa and the United Arab Emirates, must isolate in hotels rooms for 10 days at their own expense. The policy was announced late last month in response to the emergence of new variants of the novel coronavirus that are more resistant to existing vaccines.
Getty
UK news in pictures
14 February 2021
People play ice hockey on frozen flooded fields near Ely in Cambridgeshire
PA
UK news in pictures
13 February 2021
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, wearing a face mask, accompanied by Sarah Rose (left), MD of the Northumbria healthcare PPE manufacturing hub in Seaton Delaval
PA
UK news in pictures
12 February 2021
Lanterns hang across the street to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year which marks the Year of the Ox, in Chinatown, central London, during England’s third national lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus.
PA
UK news in pictures
11 February 2021
European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic at London’s St Pancras Station after arriving in the UK ahead of talks with Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove on the Northern Ireland protocol.
PA
UK news in pictures
10 February 2021
A frozen road sign and hedgerow are covered in icicles, as Storm Darcy affects large parts of the country, in Shenley, Hertfordshire
Reuters
UK news in pictures
9 Februrary 2021
People walk up Gardner street in Glasgow as snow blankets the city
AFP/Getty
UK news in pictures
8 February 2021
Drifting snow covers a car in Harwood, County Durham
PA
UK news in pictures
7 February 2021
People walk through the snow in Knole Park in Sevenoaks
Getty
UK news in pictures
6 February 2021
A boy sledges at Moulin Moor near Pitlochry, as storm Darcy approaches, in Scotland
Reuters
UK news in pictures
5 February 2021
Research centre assistant Layla Hillsden with a rare copy of the 1647 Beaumont and Fletcher folio, an anthology of plays by John Fletcher and William Beaumont, from the personal library of King Charles II that has recently been acquired by Special Collections at the University of Leeds
PA
UK news in pictures
4 February 2021
Al Goodridge, from Newtonmore, uses an axe to create a channel in the ice for his wife Alice to swim in in Loch Insh, in the Cairngorms National Park
PA
UK news in pictures
3 February 2021
A mural of Captain Sir Tom Moore, by artist Robert Newbiggin, adorns a wall in Southport. The WWII veteran raised nearly £33 million for NHS charities ahead of his 100th birthday last year by walking laps of his garden in Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire. He was admitted to Bedford Hospital this weekend after testing positive for Covid-19 and died yesterday with his family present
Getty
UK news in pictures
2 February 2021
Police officers remove an environmental activist protesting against the HS2 high speed rail line, from the roof of the HS2 office in central London on February 2, 2021. – Designed to run to the former industrial powerhouse Birmingham and then Manchester and Leeds, HS2 was supposed to follow on from London’s southern Eurostar connection with Paris
AFP via Getty Images
UK news in pictures
1 February 2021
Christine Barry lifts her son Oran, two, up to kiss a statue of St Brigid as they visit St Brigid’s holy well in Co Kildare to mark St Brigid’s Day which is seen by many in Ireland as the first day of Spring
PA
UK news in pictures
31 January 2021
People walk a dog in Pugneys Country Park in Wakefield, West Yorkshire
PA
UK news in pictures
30 January 2021
Firefighters inspect the charred remains of a block at Napier Barracks after police have said a fire was started deliberately in Folkestone, England. Napier Barracks, part of the disused Somerset House Sir John Moore Army Barracks, has been used since last summer to house Asylum Seekers arriving from France to the South Coast. It has been reported that 120 of the 400 people being housed there have caught Coronavirus and a visiting doctor had described the living conditions as “inhumane”
Getty
UK news in pictures
29 January 2021
Members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community take part in Friday prayers at the Baitus Subhan Mosque in Croydon, England. For nearly the past year, the Covid-19 pandemic, and its resulting limits on public gatherings, have forced religious communities to find new ways to observe prayers, with many events being marked at home. Mosques as well as other places of religious worship remain open, though numbers have been limited to help maintain social distancing
Getty
UK news in pictures
28 January 2021
Artwork depicting animals, created by Raymond and Leonard is displayed in the window of a house in Acton, London, to launch The Great Big Art Exhibition, the nation’s largest ever exhibition, an initiative by Firstsite
PA
UK news in pictures
27 January 2021
Fishing boats, some abandoned, lie in the waters of the River Wyre at Fleetwood in Lancashire
PA
UK news in pictures
26 January 2021
A group of friends use a sheet to sledge in the snow-covered Lickey Hills Country Park, Birmingham
PA
UK news in pictures
25 January 2021
A cyclist watches the sun rise from Primrose Hill
PA
UK news in pictures
24 Janaury 2021
People go sledging in the snow on Parliament Hill on Hampstead Heath
Getty
UK news in pictures
23 January 2021
Denise Munday (left) and Ruth Richards (right) check on Ruth’s rescued ex-battery hens, in flood water at her home near Naburn Lock in York following heavy rain during Storm Christoph
PA
UK news in pictures
22 January 2021
The clean up as floodwater begins to recede from the town of Northwich, Cheshire, in the aftermath of Storm Christoph
Getty
UK news in pictures
21 January 2021
Members of the Emergency services work to evacuate Care Home residents after they became stranded by flood water, in Northwich, northwest England as Storm Christoph brings heavy rains and flooding across England
AFP via Getty
UK news in pictures
20 January 2021
Flooding underneath the A46 at Six Hills Lane in Leicestershire, as Storm Christoph is set to bring widespread flooding, gales and snow to parts of the UK
PA
UK news in pictures
19 January 2021
A surfer rides a wave in the sea off of Boscombe beach in Dorset
PA
UK news in pictures
18 January 2021
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson stands outside a room where technicians are manufacturing the AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine at Oxford Biomedica, in Oxford
Reuters
Other recommendations include properly resourcing local public health teams linked to councils, prioritise investment in research and development to work on new vaccines, and showing “international leadership on global surveillance to help identify new emerging infectious diseases”.
Reacting to the speech, Pascale Robinson, from the campaign group We Own It, said that “a decade of austerity, underfunding and privatisation” meant that “the NHS was completely ill-equipped to handle a major shock to the system like a pandemic”.
“Right from the outset, we saw our NHS being completely overwhelmed and people’s lives being needlessly lost as a result. The blame for this sits squarely at the government’s door. They’ve handed massive chunks of the health service to money grabbing private companies and failed to invest in the NHS’ future.”