Nobel Prize winning scientist Sir Paul Nurse led an attack on the Government today saying the UK has been “firefighting” through the coronavirus crisis.
Sir Paul, director of Francis Crick Institute, also said it was unclear who was making decisions in government.
The senior scientist argued the Government had been "too much on the back foot" throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
He told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme everyone from politicians to scientists and doctors have all been making mistakes that they must learn from.
He added: "I get a sense the UK has been rather too much on the back foot, increasingly playing catch-up, firefighting us through successive crises."
He said the Government should "get a much clearer publicly-presented strategy” and added: "We're not getting that in communications. Maybe there's a strategy there, I don't see it.”
He went on to question the government’s leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic, adding: "Do we have a proper Government system in here that can combine tentative knowledge, scientific knowledge, with political action?
"And the question I'm constantly asking myself is: who is actually in charge of the decisions? Who is developing the strategy and the operation and implementation of that strategy?
"Is it ministers? Is it Public Health England? The National Health Service? The Office for Life Scientists, Sage? I don't know, but more importantly, do they know?"
He also hit out at the Government’s testing strategy, saying there were many small laboratories that could have got a “major increase” in testing capacity more quickly than was possible with the larger labs.
He also said a lack of testing had made hospitals "potentially unsafe places to be" during the Covid-19 outbreak.
Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis, responding to the criticism about “firefighting” said: “I just wouldn’t agree with that.
“What we are seeing through this actually is we as a government have been very clear with people, very transparent with people.
“The Prime Minister himself has been very clear - the Prime Minister is ultimately responsible. We do follow the best advice that is out there from both the scientific advisors and chief medical advisers and teams there.
“But ultimately it is the ministers who make decisions and I think that is one of the things we have seen throughout this process, is our working to ensure we get as much information to people as we can to ensure that people understand what we can all do to play our part in keeping the R-level down."
