Well in their defence of their defence, they could always use this handy quote from the Home Secretary when she was asked why the UK has the worst daily death rate in the world. Quoted verbatim, but I'd warn against reading aloud as it may cause brain malfunction:
"We’ve been in this virus pandemic for about a year now um and it’s a global pandemic across the world and governments respond you know very differently, we’ve seen that, across the world but based on the fact society evidence that have effectively been presented to us as decision makers. Now I think the fact of the matter is we’ve seen just deaths around, around the world, harrowing death tolls around the world. Government has responded as facts change, information changes, working with scientists, working with medics, working with the professionals who have been guiding us throughout this, so there is no one reason as to why we have, you know, an appalling death toll. The numbers are deeply tragic and this is a human tragedy across the world and at home, but as I’ve said you know they’ll be a wide range of reasons and I’m sure you know in the future we’ll all look back and you know we’ll all look and with a degree of humility I would say as well as to measures that could have been taken, some measures we may not have even taken right now and understand and look at why that may have been the case. " [ P Patel, 21.01.21 ] (The actual Home Secretary)