The chair of the public inquiry into Covid-19 in the UK has concluded that citizens were "failed" by the government and warned of "immense suffering" if lessons are not learned before the next pandemic.
Heather Hallett also dismissed the claims of government officials that the UK had been as prepared to deal with a pandemic as anywhere else in the world.
Boris Johnson, who led the Conservative government during the crisis, was portrayed in evidence from former ministers and officials as having been unable to make vital decisions.
"I have no hesitation in concluding that the processes, planning and policy of the civil contingency structures across the UK failed the citizens of all four nations," Ms Hallett said, in the first report from the ongoing hearings.
"There were serious errors on the part of the state and serious flaws in our civil emergency systems.
"This cannot be allowed to happen again."
The inquiry is examining the response to the global pandemic which has claimed about 230,000 lives in the UK.
The hearings are set to run for another two years. Today's report deals with the first of its nine modules which looked at the onset of the health crisis.
It found that there was a "damaging absence of focus" on the measures and infrastructure that would be needed to deal with a fast-spreading disease, even though a coronavirus outbreak at pandemic scale "was foreseeable".
'Dangerously mistaken'
Ms Hallett concluded that "UK was ill-prepared for dealing with the whole-system civil emergency of a pandemic, let alone the coronavirus pandemic that actually struck."
The government had been "dangerously mistaken" to believe that it was one of the best prepared countries in the world.
Ms Hallett noted that one of the first lines of defence in a pandemic is "containment", but she found that a system of test, trace and isolate "did not exist in the UK when the pandemic struck".
"The UK government's sole pandemic strategy, from 2011, was outdated and lacked adaptability.
"It was never in fact properly tested.
"The UK government neither applied it nor adapted it and the doctrine that underpinned it was ultimately abandoned, as was the 2011 strategy itself."
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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer agreed with the inquiry's conclusion that the government had "failed UK citizens".
"The backbone of Britain is made up of those committing their lives to service," he said, as they "put themselves in the eye of the storm".
"This government is committed to learning the lessons from the inquiry and putting better measures in place to protect and prepare us from the impact of any future pandemic".
The prospect of another pandemic was also raised in today's report.
Ms Hallett warned that the UK would face "immense suffering" if it is not better prepared for the next pandemic, which she said would probably be even more destructive.
"There will likely be a next time. The expert evidence suggests it is not a question of 'if' another pandemic will strike but ‘when’.
"The evidence is overwhelmingly to the effect that another pandemic - potentially one that is even more transmissible and lethal - is likely to occur in the near to medium future.
"That means that the UK will again face a pandemic that, unless we are better prepared, will bring with it immense suffering and huge financial cost and the most vulnerable in society will suffer the most."
