The official UK COVID Inquiry will be ignored by the public and will do nothing to inform future pandemic responses unless it urgently works to change the impression that its mind is already made up on lockdowns, campaigners have warned.
UsForThem, a grassroots organisation formed in the early days of lockdown to advocate for children to be put first, has written to Baroness Hallett, who chairs the inquiry, threatening to bring a judicial review against any final findings unless the investigation changes course.
The letter, seen by The European Conservative, states that as it stands,
[The Inquiry] risks entirely undermining the validity of its future findings by perpetuating the impression that it holds a predetermined view of both the nature of the pandemic and of the desirability and effectiveness of the UK’s particular response.
In particular, campaigners criticised the Inquiry for dismissing evidence—raised by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, no less—that lengthy government-imposed lockdowns did more harm than good, particularly to children and young people. Also for failing to address the “ethical dimension of decision-making” and for largely excluding voices that offer views dissenting from the former Conservative government under Boris Johnson from oral evidence sessions. Such voices, they say, have also been “denied a right to reply in response to serious and potentially defamatory criticisms made of them in the Inquiry.”
This letter also demands that the Inquiry considers the effects on decision-making of “the by now well-documented suppressive activities of both the government … and private sector partners … including in relation to academic and clinical commentaries, opinions and advice which were perceived as casting doubt on the government’s policy decisions.”
In a damning indictment of the investigation’s current approach, UsForThem said it is
failing to consider whether there was any alternative to the lockdowns that were imposed in this country. … However, the question of whether lockdowns were necessary, proportionate and justified can only be meaningfully considered in the context of possible available alternative strategies and—crucially—only once one has attempted to evaluate the harms caused by such action.
The concerns we are raising are focussed on the fact that the conduct of the Inquiry gives rise to the appearance that it has already been predetermined that lockdowns … were necessary, proportionate and justified notwithstanding the very extensive and far-reaching documented harms they have caused, and continue to cause, including (but by no means limited to) children and young people.
The Inquiry seems instead to be almost exclusively focussed on whether lockdowns should have been implemented harder, sooner or for longer.
Responding to these demands, a spokesman for the Inquiry said: “We are in regular contact with UsForThem … [and] we are surprised they are asking the same questions again.” They added: “The UK COVID Inquiry rejects any suggestion that it has pre-determined its findings.”
UsForThem Executive Founder Molly Kingsley noted that while the Inquiry features a separate module on children and education, the points raised in her group’s letter go “far beyond” this. Speaking to The European Conservative, she said as an example: “How on earth can you have a decision-making module that has failed to look at the core issues of ethics, censorship and the very key issue” of whether lockdown worked. Mrs. Kingsley added that the Inquiry may be “looking” at some aspects related to these points, but future conclusions can already be guessed from its current “tone.”
