Government messaging to stay at home to save the NHS during lockdowns probably contributed to thousands of deaths from missed and delayed diagnoses. That is one conclusion of the latest report from the Covid Inquiry looking at the impact of the pandemic on healthcare.

Of course, it is not just the messaging but the lockdowns that led to deaths. Extensive peer-reviewed research has found that lockdowns had only a limited impact in reducing Covid deaths. But further studies have suggested that in the UK and across the world, lockdowns led to an increase in excess mortality from all causes.

Why might lockdowns have caused excess deaths? The Inquiry report identifies one obvious reason as being missed diagnoses and delayed treatment from people following instructions to stay at home rather than bother the NHS. But there is also evidence of enforced isolation causing significant numbers of extra deaths from substance abuse, lack of exercise and even murders.

This is a hard lesson for policymakers, but they must learn from it if we are not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Unfortunately, Inquiry chair Baroness Hallett seems unwilling to confront the received wisdom of the Government and its advisors.

This latest finding is one of many which have disproved previously held assumptions about lockdowns. In November, the last Inquiry report stated that, had we locked down even a week earlier, 23,000 lives would have been saved from Covid. But that assertion was simply not consistent with the evidence. Just last month, that was supported by the Director General of the Office for Statistical Regulation. He took the unprecedented step of writing to the Inquiry to complain about how its report had interpreted and presented that figure.

Yet the deeper problem for Baroness Hallett with the Inquiry is that it has made little attempt to evaluate Covid policies in terms of their overall costs and benefits. Instead, it insists on focusing separately on specific outcomes such as Covid deaths averted.

Even if it were true that lockdowns had averted a very high number of Covid deaths, that would not, on its own, have been justification for their implementation. A sensible policy evaluation would look at the underlying ethical problems and other deaths caused by lockdowns. It would also take into account the myriad other costs that they caused in terms of the economy, health, loneliness and education.

The Government erred repeatedly by focusing pandemic policy on averting short-term Covid deaths. As a series of cost-benefit analyses have shown, once you take a more holistic approach the justification for lockdowns withers away.

This failure should provide a key lesson for the management of any future pandemic. It is hard to see why Baroness Hallett and the Inquiry can’t understand this, with the support of seemingly limitless resources.

To date, the Inquiry has cost well over £300 million of public funds: in excess of £200 million for the Inquiry itself and a further £100 million and rising to cover Government departments responding to it. It is therefore reasonable to ask whether the taxpayer is receiving value for money from the Inquiry. At a minimum, we have the right to expect a basic level of competence.

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David Paton is a Professor of Industrial Economics at Nottingham University Business School.

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