‘Bloated’ Covid inquiry may last up to seven years
Cost of army of lawyers and technical support for Lady Hallett could reach £14 million per year
THE Government is planning for the Covid inquiry to last up to seven years as more than 150 lawyers have already been hired, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
The bill for the inquiry has reached almost £114million before the first hearings have begun, leaving it on course to be the most expensive investigation of its kind in history.
Last night MPS raised concerns that it was becoming “very expensive and very bloated” and that ministers could be using the hearing to “kick things into very long grass”. It comes amid renewed scrutiny of the Government’s decisions on Covid after The Telegraph revealed it had obtained more than 100,000 Whatsapp messages between Matt Hancock and other ministers and officials at the height of the pandemic.
In the wake of The Lockdown Files Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, demanded that the inquiry be given everything it needs to “report by the end of this year”. No end date has been set and officials and ministers have refused to say how long it might take, with Rishi Sunak saying that it needs to follow “proper process”.
Now it can be disclosed that the Government has handed out contracts for support services during the inquiry that could last up to seven years.
The inquiry’s remit has ballooned since the terms of reference were first announced last year.
Last night a spokesman said that they could not comment on the length of contracts issued by the Government.
WHEN Boris Johnson announced the terms of reference for the Covid-19 inquiry he was clear that it should focus on the “preparations and the response to the pandemic” across the UK.
Its draft remit was necessarily wide, looking at government decision making, lockdowns, school closures and financial measures including furlough.
More than a year after it was set up and before it has begun to hear evidence, there are concerns that it is becoming unwieldy.
From the former prime minister’s initial scope, Baroness Hallett, chairman of the inquiry, requested that it be broadened to include the impact on children and young people, ethnic minorities and people’s mental health. It can be revealed the “core participants” of the inquiry are arguing for a much wider range of issues to be considered, including the effect of a decade of austerity, structural racism, violence against doctors, and NHS staff progression.
The Government has to date handed out almost £114million in contracts to cover the inquiry, including for technical support, legal fees for various departments and contracts for “strategic communications”.
However, with no end date and the first of potentially 11 different “modules” beginning its evidence in June, it is well on its way to becoming the most expensive investigation of its kind.
That is a title that is held by the £192million Bloody Sunday inquiry, which took 12 years between being announced and reporting in 2010.
There are 63 lawyers, including 12 KCS, who have been hired to assist Lady Hallett, the retired High Court judge who is chairing the investigation. Under the Government’s rules relating to legal representation at public expense, fees for leading counsel are set at £220 per hour and junior counsel at £120 per hour, meaning barristers working a 37-hour week would be paid £8,140 and £4,440 respectively. This means that just the legal team working directly for the inquiry could cost in excess of £14million per year.
A similar number of lawyers were employed by the Bloody Sunday inquiry whilst the Leveson inquiry into press standards, which cost £5.4million, only employed three barristers for much of the time.
Now an analysis by The|daily Telegraph reveals that there are already more than 100 lawyers working on behalf of the core participants, people or organisations who have been recognised as having a specific interest in the work of the inquiry.
Core participants can apply for their legal costs to be covered by the inquiry, although it has said the “substantial bodies” can expect to foot their own bill. Many of the organisations involved, such as the NHS and the Department of Health, are already funded by the public purse.
Many of the legal teams are familiar on the inquiry circuit. Fieldfisher partner Martin Smith is Solicitor to the Inquiry, having held the same role at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) and the Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly.
Saunders Law is representing core particpants having been involved in the Grenfell Inquiry, the Infected Blood Inquiry and the Undercover Policing Inquiry.
Leigh Day, which was embroiled in controversy over abuse allegations to the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), is also representing core participants having been instrumental in the infected blood hearings.
All three firms are considered to be experts in the field of the inquests and inquiries.
When she opened the hearings last July, Lady Hallett said that the inquiry would be conducted as “speedily as possible so lessons are learned before another pandemic strikes”
The investigation would be broken down into at least nine modules, she said, which would run consecutively.
The inquiry has so far announced three modules, but the website suggests that there could now be a further eight added to that, making a total of 11.
The current modules are resilience and preparedness, core UK decisionmaking, political governance and the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on healthcare systems in the UK.
Other potential modules include vaccines, therapeutics and anti-viral treatment, the care sector, the test and trace system and education, children and young persons.
Each module is likely to include new core participants, with new legal teams that could be funded by the public purse. Some participants, including NHS England and Government departments, will be core participants across most of the modules.
Documents published this week show that lawyers are arguing for specialist issues to be considered for a broad range of interested parties.
The British Medical Association argued that the inquiry should look at the “state of healthcare systems entering the pandemic”, including the condition of hospitals and IT systems and the “repeated failures to address the longstanding problem of staff recruitment and retention”.
The bereaved families submitted a request for an “expert in structural racism” to be appointed alongside the experts already advising on race and discrimination.
The request comes amid mounting pressure from the groups for structural racism to be considered as a part of every module, despite Jacqueline Carey KC, counsel for the inquiry, telling a recent hearing that “including these matters is neither necessary nor proportionate”.
There were more than 20,000 responses to her consultation on the terms of reference.
Lady Hallett has already committed to “listening to and considering carefully the experiences of those who have suffered hardship or loss as a result of the pandemic” through a process called Every Story Matters.
She said at an earlier hearing that it “will not drag on for decades” and she has “been determined from the outset that the Inquiry must reach conclusions and make recommendations as soon as possible”.
Sir Bernard Jenkin, Conservative MP and chairman of the liaison committee, said: “It’s the job of the inquiry chair, the presiding judge, to interpret her own remit.
“Unfortunately, governments use public inquiries to kick things into very long grass, not necessarily to advance a rapid understanding and I think what the government must do.
“Blaming people gains nothing. The only point of a public inquiry is to learn lessons for the future.”
‘Blaming people gains nothing. the only point of a public inquiry is to learn lessons for the future’