Exercise Pegasus 2025

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

We are very grateful to the noble and learned Baroness and her inquiry into Covid-19. Exercise Pegasus came out of one of the recommendations in module 1 of the inquiry, so we are reflecting on its recommendations as they are made. We have guaranteed that there will be one major tier 1 exercise per year and to publish their findings every year, which is an important part of it and one of the key recommendations that has already come from the noble and learned Baroness’s review. We look forward to her recommendations going forward.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

I do not want to put my noble friend the Minister on the spot, but will she take cognisance of what has happened with the noble and learned Baroness’s interim report in relation to the use of statistics and the suggestion that a week-earlier lockdown would have saved 23,000 lives? The reliance at the time on certain academics, particularly at Imperial College, and the reliance of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hallett, on statistics from Imperial College, are extremely worrying because they have been debunked. Can my noble friend ensure that people are asked to really check the robustness of the analysis and the statistical methodology when they are going forward with Pegasus or other reports in the future?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My noble friend is right that my statistics may not be someone else’s statistics. We should always interrogate the data that is being put in front of us.