Cabinet Office refusal to hand over evidence ‘corrosive’, Covid Inquiry hears

The Cabinet Office’s refusal to hand over requested documents to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry is “corrosive” and will damage confidence in the process, the opening hearing has been told.

Sam Jacobs, a lawyer representing the Trades Union Congress (TUC), said the department’s position “smacks of having something to hide”.

He warned the “infighting” between Boris Johnson (pictured) and the Government “jars with the terrible losses” suffered during the pandemic.

Government lawyers have appeared to suggest the former prime minister’s notebooks could be withheld to stop him handing over unredacted evidence to the inquiry.

Ministers are challenging chairwoman Baroness Heather Hallett’s request for the materials in the courts by seeking a judicial review.

Mr Jacobs said on Monday it was a “matter of regret” that the inquiry had started “under something of a cloud”.

“It (the Cabinet Office) is refusing even to return Mr Johnson’s diaries to him as it knows Mr Johnson intends to provide them to the inquiry,” he said.

“Mr Johnson himself has been complaining to the Times newspaper of the Cabinet Office foot-dragging in response to the inquiry, of wasting public time and money by delaying the inquiry, and of deliberately frustrating the inquiry’s work.

“My Lady, the infighting jars with the terrible losses described in the impact film that we watched this morning.

“The position taken by the Cabinet Office is corrosive because it damages confidence in this inquiry. It smacks of having something to hide – of fighting tooth and nail to avoid to avoid revealing all to the inquiry.

“What the public want to know is … whether the Cabinet Office can approach this inquiry, not just now but going forward, with the spirit of openness and candour that we deserve.

“Those in the cabinet either have the will to respond openly to this inquiry, or they do not.”

The TUC was also among participants to draw a link between austerity and the ability of public services to prepare for the pandemic.

More than a decade of spending cuts stretched resources to “breaking point” and almost eradicated any meaningful service able to enforce health and safety in workplaces, Mr Jacobs said.

Mr Johnson sought to provide reassurances that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) – the primary regulator – would be carrying out spot inspections, but these proved “vacuous,” he told the inquiry.

Austerity had left the HSE “so depleted” in its resources that the number of reports it received vastly exceeded the number of checks completed, Mr Jacobs said.

By early June 2020, the Health and Safety Executive had received more than 6,000 additional concerns from workers about social distancing and other pandemic-related matters, the inquiry heard.

But this resulted in just 47 physical inspections of workplaces and one prohibition notice, he said.

Robin Allen KC, representing the Local Government Association (LGA), echoed the TUC’s concerns.

Austerity also “inevitably” affected the ability of councils to plan and prepare for the pandemic as well as the resilience of services, he said.

“Across these points, we expect the inquiry to find that all local government services have been impacted by austerity. This, as we’ve heard, has gone on for a decade. The reductions in funding saw councils lose 60p out of every pound of funding,” Mr Allen told the inquiry.

“That must be seen against rising demand in key services such as adult and children social care, and homelessness support. Inevitably, this impacted the ability to plan, to prepare and resource and the overall resilience of services.”

Lockdown given ‘very little thought’ ahead of pandemic

A lockdown was given “very little thought” ahead of the pandemic and there was a failure to consider the “potentially massive impact” it might have, the UK Covid-19 Inquiry has heard.

There was also a lack of forethought around some of the major areas of life affected by the outbreak of a coronavirus pandemic, the inquiry’s lead counsel, Hugo Keith KC, said.

He told the first public hearing on Tuesday that, while it might seem “extraordinary” now given the experience the UK has had, there had been “very little debate pre-pandemic” around whether a lockdown might be necessary and how it could be avoided.

He said: “Extraordinary though it may seem, given that it’s a word that’s forever seared in the nation’s consciousness, there was very little debate pre-pandemic of whether a lockdown might prove to be necessary in the event of a runaway virus, let alone how a lockdown could be avoided.

“Very little thought was given to how, if it proved to be necessary, something as complex, difficult and damaging as a national lockdown could be put in place at all.

“Equally, there appears to have been a failure to think through the potentially massive impact on education and on the economy in trying to control a runaway virus in this way.”

He said “the months and years that followed (the first lockdown), we all recall, saw death and illness on an unprecedented scale…” as he noted that some 226,977 people died across the UK with Covid-19 recorded on their death certificate.

Setting out some of the events leading to the first lockdown in March 2020, he said module one of the inquiry will look at the UK’s preparedness and steps taken such as increasing hospital capacity and closing schools.

He said: “Was this need for surge capacity (in hospitals) something that had been adequately prepared for?

“How developed were those plans for school closures?”

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

He added: “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.”

He noted that, while countries might not be able to be perfectly prepared for pandemics, they can “certainly be under-prepared”, as he outlined how few of the major areas of life which were badly affected had been anticipated, “let alone considered in detail”, by the UK Government.

“Huge, urgent and complex policy decisions were required to be taken in relation to shielding, employment support, managing disruption to schools, borders, lockdowns, and non-pharmaceutical interventions, restrictions, social restrictions, and, equally importantly, the profoundly unequal impact of the pandemic on the vulnerable and the marginalised.

“Few of those areas were anticipated, let alone considered in detail.”

Addressing inquiry chairwoman Baroness Heather Hallett, he said: “My lady, no amount of foresight or planning can guarantee that a country will not make mistakes when a disease strikes, but that does not mean that we should not strive to be as ready as we sensibly can be.

“No country can be perfectly prepared, but it can certainly be under-prepared.”

Copyright (c) PA Media Ltd. 2023, All Rights Reserved. Picture (c) Kirsty O’Connor / PA.