Disclosures ‘sorely needed’ amid warnings inquiry is kicking can down the road

Baroness Warsi says the public are owed answers after claims that report may not emerge for decade

Aformer Conservative Party chairman has expressed concern that there is “no end date” for the Covid inquiry as she said The Daily Telegraph’s Lockdown Files “needed to be disclosed”.

Baroness Warsi suggested that the inquiry is taking too long, amid increasing fears that it could drag on for years. There are also concerns that the inquiry will be skewed towards those who supported lockdowns, and that lockdown sceptics will not be properly represented.

Boris Johnson announced in May 2021 that an independent inquiry into the pandemic response would be held, but almost two years later Baroness Hallett, its chairman, has still not begun hearing evidence.

On Wednesday, after The Telegraph’s publication of a cache of Whatsapp messages between ministers and aides at the height of the pandemic, Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, said the inquiry needs to “report by the end of this year” as he said there should be “no more delays”.

Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, has insisted the inquiry has all the resources it needs and that its staff should be left to “get on and do their job”. But Lady Warsi echoed concerns among families of the bereaved and many others affected by the Government’s Covid response by saying that the UK Covid-19 Inquiry must not be allowed to drift on endlessly.

In an interview on Steph’s Packed Lunch on Channel 4 yesterday, she said: “I think these messages needed to be disclosed because we have a public inquiry ongoing, we don’t know when that public inquiry is going to report, there’s no end date on it, and people’s lives, livelihoods, relationships have all been impacted by decisions that ministers took.

“And it’s important for the public to know how these decisions were taken, when they were taken and who was taking them. So I think it is in the public interest that these messages have been made public.”

While the public inquiry’s task is to get to the truth and to make sure mistakes of the past are not repeated in the future, critics say it is being used by politicians to kick the can down the road.

The inquiry will begin hearing evidence in June in a six-week session that will form the first of several “modules” dealing with different aspects of the pandemic response. No date has yet been set for the other modules, or even how many there will be, leading to speculation that it could be a decade before a final report is published.

The Iraq Inquiry, which began in 2009, took seven years to publish its final report.

Lady Warsi said: “Part of the problem is that the inquiry isn’t going to report until some time.

“We may even have a change of government by the time this inquiry finally reports – and people’s lives today, the way we are living our lives; which businesses are still open and still running and which have gone bust; how many relationships are still surviving and how many people have broken relationships; how many people have lost loved ones; how children are now learning and how many children have been impacted by not having schooling; issues around speech, development in young children, mental health issues among students; degrees that pupils may have got, jobs that they did or didn’t get – all of these things were impacted by decisions that ministers were taking.”

Sweden has already concluded its own inquiry into its coronavirus response, aware that the next pandemic could strike at any time.

Lady Hallett, a former Court of Appeal judge, was appointed to chair the inquiry in December 2021 and formally set up with inquiry in June last year. It has already cost more than £116 million of taxpayers’ money before any witnesses have been heard.

In November a group of 21 MPS and peers wrote to Lady Hallett accusing her of failing to give proper representation to groups likely to “challenge” the Government’s decisions to impose lockdowns during the pandemic.

Citing the makeup of the bodies granted core participant status for the inquiry, they said that “it appears to be heavily weighted towards organisations and individuals which can fairly be presumed either to favour lockdowns as a pandemic policy or else to have understandable personal reasons to advocate for earlier and/or harder lockdowns”.

The cross-party group of MPS and peers said it was “critical” that the inquiry considered a “diverse range of views and perspectives”, warning that otherwise there was a “serious risk” it could become “inadvertently blinded to areas of important investigation”.

The signatories of the letter, who include former Cabinet ministers Lord Frost and Esther Mcvey as well as Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee, said that while groups representing those bereaved owing to Covid were represented, it was “surprising” that there appeared to be no representation for families bereaved because of the impact of lockdowns,

‘It is important for the public to know how these decisions were taken, when they were taken and who was taking them’

such as through cancelled or delayed medical appointments.

They also noted that there was no representation from any British industries that resisted or were affected by lockdowns, such as the hospitality, tourism and retail sectors.

The Telegraph reported last year that an application was made for core participant status by a consortium of hospitality groups, but that it was rejected by the inquiry.

The signatories to the letter said: “As it stands we fear the Inquiry risks leaving itself exposed to claims of a whitewash.”

Even before it has taken any evidence, the inquiry has already cost more than half the near £200million cost of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, which was the longest inquiry in British history.

Some of the contracts awarded to firms assisting with legal or technical support to the inquiry run to 2026, with options to extend them to 2028, showing that plans are in place for it to last for at least five years.

Sir John Chilcot, the chairman of the Iraq Inquiry, did not publish his final report until five years after the hearings themselves had finished, partly because of the sheer weight of evidence that had to be considered, and partly because of the lengthy process of contacting those who would be mentioned in the report and giving them a right to reply.

Boris Johnson formally announced in May 2021 that there would be an inquiry, and that it would “start” in spring 2022, but admitted at the time that witnesses would not start hearing evidence until some time after that.

He had resisted calls to set up an inquiry sooner than that, insisting it would be wrong to “weigh down” scientific advisers and take up “huge amounts of officials’ time” when the pandemic had still not run its course.

On Wednesday Lady Hallett responded to the criticism by denying that the inquiry would “drag on for decades” and said comparing the UK’S drawn out response to Sweden’s swift publication of its own findings was not helpful. She said: “Despite the inquiry team working flat out, I know of no other inquiry of its kind in the world, ie one in public, with statutory powers to obtain evidence, with core participants playing important roles and with extraordinarily broad terms of reference. So with respect to certain commentators, comparisons to other countries are unhelpful.

“Furthermore, I wish to emphasise there will be no whitewash.”