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Jeremy Hunt has admitted the government didn't learn lessons from earlier pandemics when he was health secretary.

The former cabinet minister and Boris Johnson's Tory leadership rival said he took his "share of responsibility" for the "structures" that have impacted how badly hit Britain has been by coronavirus.

But he blamed "groupthink" in Whitehall and called for scientific advice to be "de-politicised" to be better prepared next time.

At more than 43,000 people, the UK has one of the highest COVID-19 death tolls in the world.

As governments in all four nations gradually start to ease lockdown and infection counts have dropped, Mr Hunt said ministers could have been better prepared for the pandemic.

He denied austerity and the "tremendous financial pressure" on the NHS and social care sectors was the cause.

"The problems and the challenges we've had in tackling coronavirus don't relate directly to that pressure," he told a virtual event with Politico.

"They relate more to the fact we didn't learn the lessons of SARS and MERS, which should have happened under my time as well.

"I fully accept that I have a share of responsibility for that."

SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) killed more than 700 people and terrified hundreds of thousands in 2002-03 and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) emerged in 2012.

Pushed on why the government didn't prepare better, Mr Hunt said: "I try to ask myself that question - what should have been done better in the structures?

"I come back to the idea of transparency of scientific advice - widen the gene pool of scientists giving advice to ministers.

"What I think we need to do is de-politicise the process of scientific advice and also educate the public that sometimes scientists disagree.

"Just as economists giving advice on interest rates regularly disagree.

"We need to avoid the groupthink that clearly existed - we need to find ways to challenge the groupthink that meant we thought we were all fine because we prepared for a pandemic flu, when actually we needed to be thinking about pandemic SARS.

"That's the kind of structural change which we urgently need to address."

Mr Hunt also said mistakes were made in dealing with the virus outbreak by not doing things earlier like lockdown, recommending face masks and increasing testing capacity.

"With the benefit of hindsight, for sure, we would have done lots of things differently...

"And these aren't just mistakes that were made here, they were made by governments all over the world."

Mr Hunt, who was ousted as foreign secretary when Boris Johnson became prime minister, also ruled himself out of returning to cabinet, amid rumours a reshuffle could be on the cards.

But he said he would consider a return in the "reasonably distanced future".