now senior government ministers and
officials have told the bbc there should
have been a lockdown in england
at an earlier date last autumn to
contain the second wave of the pandemic
that claimed tens of thousands of lives
on the eve of the first anniversary of
the initial restrictions
we start a week of special nightly
reports looking back over the past year
our political editor laura kunsberg has
spoken to 20 ministers
and senior officials off the record the
men and women whose decisions
have had such a far-reaching effect on
people's lives
at the start of march last year i asked
a senior member of the government
if they were worried about coronavirus
their answer was
personally no now we've lost more than
the population of a small city
i've talked to more than 20 senior
politicians officials
and former officials those who were in
the room
making the decisions they agreed to talk
on the basis of anonymity
this is what they were thinking as we
all watched on
the virus arriving in italy was when it
sank in for most
like a scene from a nightmare that italy
is now
living the government had been talking
about the virus for weeks
but some on the inside say it was seen
as hysteria it's just like flu
it went from not on the radar to people
on the floor of hospitals in lombardy
that was the moment we knew it was
inevitable said one senior minister
after several weeks of cobra meetings
described by one attendee as a disaster
are we prepared enough mr hancock
the government machine was breaking in
our hands an insider told me
number 10 had started to prepare the
public
but although it was never a firm
proposal officials had even talked about
chicken pox parties to help the virus
spread among the healthy population
the conversations were totally in the
wrong universe one source said
but a tiny group of advisers confronted
the prime minister
with evidence on saturday the 14th of
march showing graphs to him that
suggested without tougher
faster action the nhs would collapse we
had those
reasonable worst case scenarios of
hundreds of thousands of deaths
and the problem with them was that they
were coming true
so we knew we had to act and that monday
i went to parliament
and said that all unnecessary social
contact should be stopped
i couldn't believe that i was having to
say these words
lockdown was coming it was all so new
we were more blind than we told the
public one official admits
that something more personal soon struck
tonight at 10 the prime minister boris
johnson has been taken to intensive care
cabinet ministers were summoned urgently
on the phone
all of a sudden we were asked to join a
call not knowing
if he was alive one of them said who's
in charge of the government
well the government's business will
continue but the country spiraling into
crisis
could for a moment have lost its prime
minister
but after two months of strict rules
news broke
about the prime minister's chief advisor
dominic cummings
he in fact traveled to his parents home
in durham
he refused to quit instead defending
himself in the downing street garden
i thought the best thing to do in all
the circumstances was to drive to an
isolated cottage on my father's farm
the political atmosphere turned sour the
cabinet minister said there'd been
tremendous goodwill the early pandemic
washed away
the bitterness of brexit but that came
flooding back
all that bile all that frustration
by the summer with cases falling and
many rules relaxed
we didn't feel like a country in the
grip of a pandemic
even encouraged to eat out hello but
when schools and universities returned
the testing system couldn't cope and the
rise began
the senior figure told me if you do
nothing now by the end of october you'll
get something worse than the first
wave there was frustration among some in
downing street about the prime
minister's attitude
sometimes appearing to be in let it rip
mode
what i said to the prime minister over
the summer is review what's going on
there's likely to be a second way and
don't make the same mistakes again
because i think that's unforgivable i
might have given you the benefit of the
doubt in the first wave but you didn't
learn the lessons and you went and
repeated the very same mistakes
the prime minister resisted calls for a
short lockdown
a senior figure told me the biggest
mistake was the rush of blood to the
head in the summer
and the prime minister has to carry the
can from the middle of september there
were people in government saying
you're going to have to toughen things
up you're going to have to go faster
no we listen to all of the evidence all
the way through but you've got to
balance
all of the different considerations you
know it's only at the prime minister's
desk that
all these different considerations come
together
yet some believe boris johnson can't be
blamed it was a reasonable set of
judgments to make
no one knew then either about the new
variant
the oxygen levels plummet of a coveted
patient
but for some of the decision makers
still in government the missed moments
of september had a profound effect
setting a course for a terrible second
wave
time and again those who made the
choices cite one big success
throwing everything at finding a vaccine
they had resolved to pay high
pay early and ensure it works at home
ministers resolved to set aside the
normal rules
the project was vital but uncertain
much of it was secret too the vaccines
even had code names
named after submarines to protect
commercial confidentiality
now that early choice to push alone for
a vaccine
seems a stroke of genius but back then
it was a real
gamble this generation of decision
makers
and the fabric of the state have been
stretched
in a way they just hadn't been for
decades but so have we
but those who made the decisions are all
too aware
that mistakes in these last 12 months
may have had such a terrible cost
that was uh laura there with the first
of this week's special reports
uh on the past year