Cameron defends his austerity programme, which unions have denounced as “the dismantling of the public health system”.
Madrid, June 20 (European Press) –
Former British Prime Minister David Cameron (2010-2016) admitted on Monday that his government made mistakes in preparing for a pandemic, by not considering different types of diseases to prepare for the future.
Cameron stated in the inquiry into the management of the COVID-19 pandemic that “groupthink” meant that his government did not focus enough on pandemics other than influenza.
“More time has been devoted to pandemic influenza and the risks of pandemic influenza than potential epidemics of other respiratory diseases, as COVID-19 has been shown to be,” he said, while defending that during his tenure he had tried to improve planning for the country’s risks. By changing government structures.
In addition, he noted that “it is wrong to say that we (were) preparing for the wrong pandemic”: “There may still be a flu pandemic, and it’s good that we were prepared for it, but we spend a lot of time preparing for an epidemic that didn’t happen rather than one that did.” “.
The Health Secretary at the time, Conservative Jeremy Hunt (2012-2018), who will also be questioned this week, declared as a witness that they knew that the spread of many different types of virus could lead to a pandemic, but the belief they had “that the most likely scenario is a pandemic flu.”
However, the former British prime minister vigorously defended his state’s austerity programme, which was roundly criticized by unions, denouncing its measures as having “destroyed and dismantled public health systems” with cuts that meant the health service “had no fighting chance.”
In that sense, he admitted he had been warned about pressure from the National Health Service (NHS), but insisted the country had the financial capacity to implement measures during the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to your measurements.
Thus, he suggested, policies of austerity were necessary to put the public finances in order, because without them they would have lacked money for the NHS. He declared, “The health system is as strong as the economy, one paying for the other.”
This investigation aims to learn lessons from the aftermath of the pandemic by investigating the actions that were taken and their consequences. Therefore, no one will be found guilty or acquitted, and the recommendations are not binding, so governments do not have to adopt them.
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