A Norfolk MP has said it is too early for “blame and fault” after a cross-party report concluded that serious errors in the handling of Covid in the UK cost thousands of lives.

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Science minister George Freeman, who is MP for Mid Norfolk, said the pandemic had "caught the world by surprise".

Asked if the UK government should apologise, he added: "It's too early for any proper discussion about blame and fault. This was a biomedical Battle of Britain and I suspect mistakes were made."

He suggested the UK’s high death toll was linked to the “very heavy obesity-related cardiometabolic chronic disease cohort that we've been carrying for years - that's a failure of public health in this country over decades”.

“I think the public would look at last year and say of course mistakes were made, but in the end this country led the world in finding a vaccine,” he added.