Three years since lockdown began: how Britain changed

The UK’s first national lockdown was introduced on 23 March 2020 in an attempt to reduce the spread of the deadly Covid-19 virus.

“At present there are just no easy options,” said Boris Johnson, the then prime minister, when announcing the lockdown in a national address. “The way ahead is hard, and it is still true that many lives will sadly be lost. And yet it is also true that there is a clear way through.”

Three years on, there has been a way through – lockdown restrictions have been entirely lifted – but the pandemic claimed the lives of more than 220,000 people in the UK and, according to the World Health Organization, more than three million people around the world.

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But what has changed in British society since the first national lockdown, and how is Britain adjusting to the post-pandemic “new normal”?

Economy

Between April and June 2020, the height of the first national lockdown, UK GDP “fell by a record 19.4% before rebounding 17.6% as the country reopened over the summer”, according to the Office for National Statistics, an unprecedented level of change in GDP not seen “since ONS measurements began in 1955”.

But over two years on from the last national lockdown, economic recovery now appears to have “petered out”, said The Guardian’s economics editor Larry Elliott. “Higher inflation, higher interest rates and higher taxes are all exacting a toll”, leaving the UK economy “flatlining”, he said.

While the UK has avoided a technical recession, its economy remains 0.8% below its pre-pandemic peak in 2019, in contrast to the US, Canada, Italy, France and Japan, which have experienced growth over the same period.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said the figures underscored Britain’s “underlying resilience”, adding that they showed the economy was the fastest-growing in the G7 last year.

But Britain is the one G7 country where activity is still to return to its pre-pandemic levels and “on current trends it will be some time before it does”, said Elliott, adding that by “early 2025, the last possible moment when a general election could be held, the economy will probably still be smaller than it was in late 2019”.

Education

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a severe impact on education, with absenteeism rates rising and the achievement gap between higher and lower-income families widening.

Children are turning their backs on education “at an alarming pace”, warned the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). Its new analysis revealed that in summer 2022, 140,000 children were “severely absent”, defined as when a child is spending more time absent from, than present in, school. This represents a rise of 50% since absence levels were first elevated by the pandemic in autumn 2020.

Writing about the CSJ analysis in The Spectator, Harriet Sergeant said that the number of severely absent children “is set to multiply and will continue to do so for many years” due to the “disastrous impact of lockdown on babies and young children who are now making their way through the education system”.

Younger children were most affected by the interruption to their schooling during lockdowns, research commissioned by the Education Endowment Foundation found. Children aged four and five entering their first year of formal education in 2020 were hit hard, it said in May last year, with only 59% meeting expected levels of development by the end of the school year compared to 72% of pupils in the pre-pandemic cohort. According to the research, school closures have not only impacted literacy and numeracy skills but also physical co-ordination, language and communication, and social and emotional skills.

Mental health

New research published in The BMJ suggests that while the pandemic has affected the lives of many people, the mental health of most did not deteriorate throughout the crisis.

Experts warned, though, that the review did not specifically focus on children, young people or those with existing mental health problems, who were most likely to be affected by the pandemic.

“There is evidence from other studies of considerable variation – with some people’s mental health improving and others’ deteriorating,” Dr Gemma Knowles, from King’s College London, told the BBC. “This may mean no overall increase – but this shouldn’t be interpreted as suggesting the pandemic didn’t have major negative effects among some groups.”

NHS figures show that the number of children in contact with mental health services in England rose by nearly 30% between 2020-21 and 2021-22, to nearly a million, and as many as one in six 7-16-year-olds and one in four 17-19-year-olds had a probable mental disorder in 2022.

Inequality

According to a 2021 report by UK think tank the Resolution Foundation, the wealth gap in Britain widened during the pandemic. The study revealed that the richest 10% of the population gained an average of £50,000, while the poorest third saw only marginal increases.

“The poorest had to increase their spending during the pandemic at the same time that those higher up the income chain were able to amass significant savings,” said Ruth Patrick, senior lecturer at the University of York, on the London School of Economics blog.

While lockdown and social distancing did reduce the ability of younger, lower-earning and less educated people to work, inequality in terms of disposable income did not appear to rise, according to a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, released in January 2022. Government job support programmes combined with an expanded welfare system meant that “if anything, disposable income inequality fell”, said the report.

But despite a dip during the pandemic, income inequality has now risen to a three-year high in the 2021/22 financial year, according to the latest ONS data.

The NHS

Lockdowns were the most “intensive” measures to reduce the spread of Covid-19, according to a 2023 report from the Department of Health and Social Care into the pandemic, but they proved “highly effective” even in the face of more transmissible variants.

Nevertheless, they had a serious knock-on effect on backlogs and waiting times for NHS patients, according to the latest analysis from the British Medical Association.

The BMA found that a combination of suspension of non-urgent services and fewer people presenting to their GPs due to “concerns of burdening the health service or fears around Covid-19 infection” meant that the number of people joining NHS waiting lists “initially dropped”. But the latest figures for January 2023 show that waiting times remain “far higher than pre-Covid”.

These backlogs are only “storing up greater problems for the future”, said the BMA, and are “likely to result in worsened conditions down the line, leading to greater demand on health services”.

Ultimately, though, many health professionals agree with England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, who told MPs in December 2021, that lockdowns were necessary. “If we had not had the lockdowns, the whole system would have been in deep, deep trouble and the impact on things like heart attacks and strokes, and all the other things people must still come forward for when they have them, would have been even worse than it was,” he said.