It has been intriguing to pick up on the reporting of the UK’s COVID inquiry. Now, obviously what the media pick up on tends to be the sensational stuff, they are less likely to be interested in technical reporting about decision making. However, they are still reporting on things that have been given airtime in the inquiry courtroom.
A significant amount of attention has been given to things like whether or not different politicians expressed particular opinions, the body language of the Prime Minister and specific things that different people claimed that others have said. For example, Chris Vallance in his evidence reported what he claimed that Dominic Cummings had claimed that Rishi Sunak had said at one point.
Bring politicians into an inquiry and they are likely to use it as a stage to act out their political drama, there should be no surprise at that. However, this does not mean that the lawyers and definitely not the technical experts have to get caught up with playing their game.
In my opinion, a lot of what is being reported should have simply been ruled out as irrelevant. The inquiry should not be about political intrigue. Indeed, even if it does paint a picture of political leaders who were frail, who lost it at times, whose emotions overwhelmed them, who frequently admitted that they did not feel up to it, then our response should be a shrug of the shoulders and a “so what.” That politicians are frail human beings and that they continue to be politicians should be no surprise.
The aim of an inquiry responding to a national crisis, particularly in this case one that was part of a wider international crisis should be to learn lessons to better prepare us for the future and furthermore, it should focus on the systems and structures that were in place, to determine whether or not they worked. The system and response plan for a pandemic should have factored in that the weight of decision making would fall on the shoulders of politicians who had not prepreation, experience, training or skill in this area. Of course they didn’t, they were responding to something pretty much unprecedented.
This means that the inquiry should really be asking questions about preparedness and responsiveness. It should ask questions about whether or not we were able to get the right people into the room to make decisions, whether they were supplied with the right information and advice to make those decisions, whether there was transparency and accountability for those decisions and whether or not they were able to execute them effectively.
There will of course be some consideration about whether or not the right decisions were made. However, even that requires some care. First of all, it is easy to make hindsight judgements when working with newer information and knowing how things transpired. Secondly it is also difficult to draw certain conclusions. Can we really be sure that more people would have died if we had done x instead of y?
Whilst there has been a lot included that probably should have been quickly dismissed as out of scope, it also seems that other things have been more quickly written off as out of scope when they are much more relevant than suggested.
In his evidence, Michael Gove observed that the Government probably were not as prepared as they should have been. In mitigation he noted the novel nature of the virus and observed as others have that much of our pandemic planning had been to face an influenza pandemic. We were caught like the allies in the Second World War set up to fight the last war instead of the current one. It was in this context that he observed that several people have raised the possibility that the virus was man made, something that had leaked from a lab.
The Independent writes:
But Mr Gove, who was chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster during the pandemic, extraordinarily went on to suggest the virus may have been man-made. The veteran minister said: “It turned out that we were not as well prepared as we should have been, ideally.“The nature of the fact the virus was novel … and this probably goes beyond the remit of the inquiry, but there is a significant body of judgment that believes the virus itself was man-made. “And that presents a set of challenges as well.” Mr Gove was reprimanded by the Covid inquiry’s lead counsel, Hugo Keith KC, who said it was not the place to discuss the matter. He said: “It forms no part of the terms of reference of this inquiry Mr Gove, to address that somewhat divisive issue, so we are not going to go there.”[1]
If I may be so bold, the only extraordinary thing here is the Independent’s own reporting. In fact, it seems rather bizarre, a descent into tabloid style writing with its talk of Gove being slapped down. Note that the person allegedly slapping him down or reprimanding him was not the inquiry chair, who would be the person authorised to do this but counsel who are not in a position to reprimand or slap down anyone.
Furthermore, Gove’s claim, not that the virus was man made to note that there was a body of opinion which considered this possible was not at all extraordinary but rather it was as he rightly stated the view of a number of people.
Was Gove’s comments outside of the scope and terms of reference of the inquiry? Well, it is worth reading the terms of reference in full because as you will see, they are pretty broad.[2] For our purposes here note two things. First that the inquiry is intended to provide a factual narrative of what happened and to enable lessons to be learnt impacting on other forms of civil crisis.
I would suggest that the question of the virus’ origin is pertinent to both aims. Now, the factual conclusion may be that we are still not in a place to say for certain what that origin was, even on a balance of probabilities. However, the inquiry still needs to make that observation if it is to give a full account.
Secondly, the inquiry needs to understand what influenced decision making and a legitimate question would be whether or not SAGE and COBRA gave attention to the question of a man made, laboratory leaked virus. The follow up question would be whether or not that would have affected decision making.
Thirdly, the inquiry needs to consider whether or not our systems and structures were flexible enough to deal with different types of scenario. The suggestion seems to be that they weren’t. Understanding why not is central to the inquiry.
Fourthly, given that we may at some point face the specific threat of an artificial virus, either accidentally leaked here or abroad, or intentionally leaked as an act of terrorism or war, understanding our ability to respond to such kinds of scenario is significantly relevant to learning lessons for the future.
Both what seems to be getting serious attention and what is being quickly dismissed raises concerns about how effective and useful this inquiry will be. My concern is that it risks being distracted from what matters.
[1] Gove slapped down at Covid inquiry for suggesting virus was man-made | The Independent
[2] UK COVID-19 Inquiry: terms of reference – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
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