Covid inquiry will be ‘investigation nation deserves’ as hearings begin

Lady Hallett said she intends to answer three key questions.

• Was the UK properly prepared for the pandemic?
• Was the response appropriate?
• Can lessons be learned for the future?

The retired Court of Appeal judge began the first day of evidence of the official inquiry by welcoming the ‘dignified vigil’ held by bereaved relatives outside the hearing.

Members of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaign group lined up outside holding pictures of loved ones as they expressed frustration at feeling ‘excluded from sharing key evidence’.

Lady Hallett said she had set out an ‘ambitious’ timetable for the inquiry, adding: ‘To conduct the kind of thorough investigation the people of the United Kingdom deserve takes time and a great deal of preparation.

‘If I am to achieve my aim of making timely recommendations that may save lives and reduce suffering in the future, I had no choice.

A separate Scottish Covid-19 Inquiry chaired by Lord Brailsford is looking at the pandemic response in devolved areas in Scotland.

Hugo Keith KC, making an opening statement to inquiry said the UK ‘might not have been very well prepared at all’ for a pandemic, lead counsel to the inquiry said.

He first outlined the sequence of events in early 2020, and said that on March 3 2020 the Department of Health and Social Care, along with the three devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, published a Covid-19 Action Plan ‘setting out how they planned to tackle the coronavirus outbreak’.

He said: ‘Based on the experience of dealing with other infectious diseases and the influenza pandemic preparedness work that had been carried out, the plan stated that the United Kingdom was well prepared to respond in a way that offered substantial protection to the public.

‘Whether that was actually the case will be examined in module one.

‘And of course, that is why module one in terms of preparedness, in terms of the response that was expected, that is the focus of your examination.

‘And even at this stage before hearing the evidence, it is apparent that we might not have been very well prepared at all.’

Hugo Keith KC set out some of the events leading to the first coronavirus lockdown in March 2020, including increasing hospital capacity and closing schools.

‘Was this need for surge capacity (in hospitals) something that had been adequately prepared for?’ he asked, adding: ‘How developed were those plans for school closures?’

He said that, by March 26 2020, ‘the pandemic had the country in its grip – almost every area of public life across all four nations, including education, work, travel, the majority of public services and family life, were adversely affected.

‘The hospitality, retail, travel and tourism, arts and culture, and the sport and leisure sectors effectively ceased, even places of worship closed.

‘As you know, for very many, what they had to deal with went far beyond the curtailment of their normal lives and involved bereavement, serious illness, deprivation, mental illness, exposure to violence at home, terrible financial loss, loneliness and many other forms of suffering.’

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