The censors making a mockery of our right to know truth on Covid

AT THE start of the Covid crisis, many distinguished experts suspected the virus might have originated in a laboratory rather than naturally. But this very quickly became a taboo subject. Those who held this view were for long months dismissed as wild conspiracy theorists. How did this change happen, and what is the real position?

The Mail on Sunday’s Ian Birrell set out to obtain details of a key email conversation around the time that this major change took place. It involved Britain’s chief medical adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance (who was among 13 participants around the world) as well as Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, and Anthony Fauci, the US infectious diseases expert and Presidential adviser.

Though Ian Birrell made perfectly proper use of Freedom of Information laws, the Civil Service, in the shape of the Government Office for Science, made a mockery of those laws. It produced the emails he requested, but with almost every word in them blacked out. This is a shameful response to the public’s right to know what is done in its name. It also shows a haughty scorn for the freedom of the press. It is almost as if those involved are jeering at press and public alike.

The Mail on Sunday understands that there are sometimes reasons for keeping things under cover, especially when there is a danger of enemies finding out national secrets. But what British national secrets are at stake here? Secrecy is used far too often in Whitehall to keep facts from the public that our enemies know perfectly well already, but which our own rulers are embarrassed by. The Government censors who wield the thick black pen of secrecy simply do not believe we have any real right to know. They are wrong.