Lockdown harm on children may take six years to assess

THE Covid Inquiry may not assess the harm of lockdown on children until six years after the school closures, charities have warned.

Baroness Hallett, the inquiry’s chairman, has been accused of presiding over “unacceptable” delays to investigating the impact on children who risk being the “last to be heard”.

In a letter to Lady Hallett, Save The Children and the Children’s Rights Alliance for England said that prioritising its other investigations was putting young people at the “back of the queue”.

The inquiry, which has already cost more than £78 million, has so far announced seven modules ranging from vaccines to procurement and Test and Trace.

It has only heard evidence for its first two modules assessing pandemic preparedness and decision-making during Covid. Hearings have been scheduled up to summer 2025 but no children’s module has been timetabled.

The inquiry has said it will launch a module dedicated to education, children and young persons. However unless it finds time to hold hearings in between existing modules or rushes to hear evidence this year, it means the impact on children will likely not be heard until late 2025 or beyond, with the inquiry scheduled to last until at least 2026. This would be more than five years after schools closed in March 2020.

In the letter sent to the inquiry last week Louise King, director of the Children’s Rights Alliance for England and co-lead of Just for Kids Law, and Dan Paskins, director of UK Impact at Save the Children, said in their letter that the inquiry had provided no information of when children would be “truly represented”. “The current state of play means that it could be five or six years on from school closures before the inquiry turns its attention to children’s experiences,” they said.

“This is simply unacceptable. The pandemic touched so many people’s lives but children in particular saw their rights deeply harmed in so many ways, including by the closure of schools, the dilution of safeguards, and in some parts of the UK losing their right to play and see other children their age. Why should they be among the last to be heard from in this legal process?” The charities said there was a “lack of urgency” to hearing evidence about the harms suffered by children and was missing the opportunity to prioritise young people. “This lack of urgency around taking evidence from children, and all those who made key decisions that impacted on children during the pandemic, worries us deeply.”

A spokesman for the Covid Inquiry said: “The inquiry is hearing hundreds of first-hand experiences from children and young people. These are being collected through a large-scale research project which is already underway. The findings will feed into evidence to help inform the chair’s recommendations.”