I confess that I was probably in the same position. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and I were always commentating on the regulations, but it was always post-event. One issue we need to look at is emergency legislation being enacted with us being able to see it only after it has happened. I understand that that was the case at the start, but we were still seeing emergency legislation only two years on. That is unacceptable.

My noble friend Lady Tyler talked about vulnerable people at risk because of poverty. The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, rightly made the point, as she always does, about language support being so vital. Your Lordships will not be surprised to hear me say that clinically vulnerable people have expressed concern that the modules outlined at the start of the inquiry seem to ignore their plight. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hallett, said that the experience of vulnerable people would be threaded through her inquiry and its reports. I want to thank her for her clear recommendations in relation to clinically vulnerable people as well as those who are vulnerable for other reasons. Six of the 10 recommendations specifically mention them. I may mention them again later.

Can the Minister assure the House that the recommendations will be implemented at pace throughout all levels of national, state and local government and public agencies? Nobody has mentioned that the inquiry reprinted the extraordinary spidergrams that constituted the departmental and structural response to the emergencies. The report also noted that many with civil emergency pandemic preparedness responsibilities had full-time roles in their departments, meaning that planning and review were easy to push into the future. Will key staff with this responsibility now have time to read, think and do the regular reviews and exercises to ensure that, as and when an emergency occurs, a smoothly run system will kick into place as it did in Taiwan and Sweden?

It was also egregious that preparing for Brexit knocked everything else out of the way in Whitehall, including postponing those regular pandemic exercises. As other noble Lords have asked, how will this new Government remove groupthink from their and officials’ behaviour? As the noble Lord, Lord Harris, pointed out, we may need a change in system thinking too.

Interestingly, groupthink has also come up in the Horizon Post Office inquiry and the Infected Blood Inquiry; I am sure it will also come up in the Grenfell Tower inquiry tomorrow. This is a massive undertaking for government. The comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, about the role of Parliament were important as well: about how important our role of scrutinising government becomes at times like this. Can the Minister tell us what success will look like to the Government about how things have really changed, because groupthink about success is also sometimes part of the problem? I am very pleased that the Government are proposing a duty of candour. I think such a duty will help change the practice of Ministers being told what civil servants think Ministers want to hear.

The report is clear that the local directors of public health were not utilised effectively. They and their teams of local government environmental health officers were often ignored and dictated to, and they were ignored in their roles in local areas. The Association of Directors of Public Health continued to do all that they could throughout. I remember a conversation with one of them about 10 days after the February half term in 2020. It was evident to him at that point that a number of families had picked up Covid in northern Italy, and it was spreading swiftly into his local schools. They could not get this taken seriously further up the line despite needing powers to be able to close down independent schools—they could close down state schools but not independent schools. As a result, independent schools and the families of those attending them had a faster spread than elsewhere.

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley talked about the 2011 plan thinking only about schools in high-impact areas. Our early experience post that February 2020 half term may have guided people to say, “If we can’t control spread in schools, we’re going to have to do something else”. There was no test, trace and isolate at that point, and spread was just not contained.

The Minister talked about flexible systems, but will they also be local? Directors of public health and their teams in local councils and local NHS are well placed to help. Please can we guarantee that they will be involved?

The noble Lord, Lord Frost, was unhappy with module reporting. I disagree with him because the major changes that have to happen, and which are recognised by many past Ministers and the new Government, are major and will and should take time to get right. We do not know when the next pandemic will happen; perhaps it is brewing already. There is not just anti- microbial resistance, as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, but the person-to-person transmission of avian flu, now happening in parts of the US, Texas in particular. Time is not on our side.

The Minister said in the previous Statement in late July, following the publication of this report, that the previous Government had changed the way they accessed, analysed and shared data. It is essential to get that right but the last Government and UKHSA have cancelled wastewater testing for Covid, which is essential for early detection and monitoring. It continues in Scotland, which is one of the differences there, and in the USA and other countries. This makes it difficult for officials to spot early signs of increased cases and outbreaks.

The cancellation of Covid testing unless you are in hospital or in a care setting means that it is very difficult to gauge the level in the community. The ONS and ZOE data were helpful. Will the Government reconsider that background data? The noble Lord, Lord Hannan, said that Covid is endemic. It is not endemic yet. I hope we are out of a pandemic but Covid is not everywhere and safe for everybody. It is not endemic.

Knowing what is happening becomes important. We have hospitals telling clinical staff not to wear masks, even though there is Covid in their hospital. One academy school is saying this week that it is fine for symptomatic Covid children to return to school immediately, and we have schools still refusing to provide ventilation in classrooms that would allow clinically vulnerable children to return to school.

In July, the Minister said in the Statement that the Government’s first responsibility is to keep the public safe, so can the Minister assure your Lordships’ House on the urgent and outstanding issue of PPE, masks and ventilation being provided and encouraged where necessary to help reduce spread. I am not talking about everywhere, but where necessary.

I am also glad that the noble Lord, Lord Reid, referred to mpox. I am pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, raised TRIPS waivers and Gavi as well. They are really important. I know somebody who is going to the DRC next week. They will be working in the refugee camps and their doctor went to UKHSA to ask whether they could have a vaccination. They were told that the UK is not issuing any vaccines. Unfortunately, there are no vaccines in Goma in the DRC at all. This is not on. Perhaps the Minister could find out what is happening and why this Government are not taking this report seriously.

I wanted to talk about other things such as the longer-term effect of long Covid. I want to mention very briefly that the NHS has fired many of its front-line clinical staff who got severe long Covid because they could not prove they got the Covid in the hospitals. That is a disgrace and I think it will come back to bite the NHS in the future.

I want to end by referring to Pale Rider by Laura Spinney, published in 2016, on the Spanish flu. In the final chapter, on memory, she says:

“Memory is an active process. Details have to be rehearsed … But who wants to rehearse the details of a pandemic? … Instead, there was silence and a loss of memory”.

Are we sure that we will not have a loss of memory in the next three to five years? Will the recommendations from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hallett, make us become that new learning for government and society so that next time we can respond like Taiwan and Sweden?