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Hello, I'm welcome to Coffee House Shots,

Expectator's Daily Politics Podcast.

I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by James Forsyfe.

James, today we have a report out which is looking at the government's response to COVID.

And in a way it doesn't make for a particularly surprising reading, but the results and the judgment isn't particularly positive for the government.

No, this is the report jointly by the health and science select committees.

It's the one where you remember where Dominic Cummings came and gave evidence.

Matt Hancock gave evidence.

And I think what it says is the government was basically too late to lockdown, which is now very much the conventional wisdom.

But, you know, it did well in ordering the vaccines in advance.

I think if you'd ask people what they roughly expected the report to say, it would have said that.

I think a lot of the drama has been taken out of the report.

If you remember, there was that big row between Dominant Cummings and Matt Hancock about who was telling the truth about testing targets. But because

Matt Hancock has had to resign for other reasons, I think if Matt Hancock was still the

Secretary of State for Health, I mean, there'd be more interest in that section of the report

and whose side it takes or doesn't take than there is. I think the interesting question is,

why was there this failure, I think the report uses the term phrase failure of imagination,

to not think that, Sally Davis, sorry, that used the phrase failure of imagination,

not to think that a SARS-like virus could end up here. Why, when the UK was so convinced it was well prepared for a pandemic, was it so unprepared for

COVID-19?

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