...but fears grow over scope of probe
THE chairman of the Covid inquiry was urged last night to focus on pandemic preparedness rather than personalities as the row over the disclosure of messages dragged on.
MPs said Baroness Hallett should investigate failures of the system of government, not individuals, as she probes the lessons to be learnt from the Covid crisis.
She has been criticised for ordering the Government to share WhatsApp messages sent by Boris Johnson which the Cabinet Office believes are ‘irrelevant’.
It has refused to hand them over, arguing that doing so would represent a ‘serious intrusion of privacy’.
Last night senior politicians backed the Cabinet Office’s stance and warned Lady Hallett against overreaching by seeking private correspondence between ministers, advisers and journalists. Former Tory Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg said the probe ‘must be about the systems of government, not an individual’ as there was no point ‘trying to pin blame’.
‘Other countries seem to have done their inquiries already and we are going to have one that goes on for years,’ he added. ‘By the time it reports it will be of no interest to anybody. It has already cost £100million.’
Lady Hallett revealed this week that public hearings in the Covid inquiry are not expected to conclude until the summer of 2026. It is likely to take a long time after that for her to complete her report.
Mr Rees-Mogg said the inquiry needed to answer ‘why were we prepared for the wrong kind of pandemic, were lockdowns proportionate and how can we do it better next time. Those are the three questions. What Boris Johnson said to his great aunt on WhatsApp messages seems to me to be of very little relevance to anybody.’
Tory grandee Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said: ‘The inquiry should be more focused – not on individuals but on learning lessons on what went wrong. The primary purpose should be lessons learnt, not personalities.’
Earlier this week Sir Iain Duncan Smith accused Lady Hallett of ‘trying to be Agatha Christie’ by turning the inquiry into a ‘whodunnit’ rather than ‘whatdunnit’.
Former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption said yesterday the probe’s terms of reference were ‘very widely drawn’, but the Inquiries Act gave Lady Hallett the power to demand the documents. However, he expressed concern that the quality of government could suffer if ministers feel unable to speak confidentially on WhatsApp.
In France, at least three separate Covid investigations have been conducted, with a report by a senate board of inquiry in December 2020 finding failings in the government’s preparedness for the pandemic and its strategy for dealing with it.
In Sweden, which largely avoided lockdowns, an inquiry produced two interim reports and a final one in February last year that found the country had been ‘fundamentally correct’ in its policy but there should have been ‘more rigorous and intrusive’ measures to stop the spread of the disease.
In Italy, former prime minister Giuseppe Conte and more than a dozen other government figures have been placed under investigation by prosecutors for ‘aggravated culpable epidemic’ and manslaughter.