And so it’s over — nearly. For what has seemed like an eternity, beleaguered and formerly famous TV stars have been subjected to intense scrutiny and forced to perform unimaginable acts, sometimes obliged to chew a lot more than humble pie, in front of an audience which is probably left wondering what it was really all for.
In order to win the competition — and never let anyone tell you this hasn’t been a competition — they have dropped their colleagues in it from a great height (sometimes literally), rewritten their past in a way that only the very best PRs can, and told whopping great porkie pies behind other people’s backs. The contestants have looked earnest, obliging, and sometimes even human. It has been compelling to watch, often funny, but we also know that in a few weeks, as we are tucking into yet more overcooked meat and underdone veg, working out if panettone really can be used as a substitute for ceiling insulation, it will all be forgotten.
That’s right, I’m talking about the Covid Inquiry. Since early October, in a suite of rooms on Westbourne Terrace, not far from Paddington Basin, and just around the corner from where I live, a bunch of formerly important MPs and previously employed civil servants (as we know, the most radical by-product of the crisis is the public sector’s unwillingness to get back to work) have been subjecting themselves to a pointless post-mortem that the public have no interest in. Today it's Rishi Sunak, last week it was Boris Johnson. In four days, it will all be over, and we can get back to worrying about what we’re going to do when the next pandemic appears; because this inquiry won’t have helped at all.
A bunch of formerly important MPs have been subjecting themselves to a pointless post-mortem
The inquiry has been a media spectacle designed, it seems, primarily to embarrass anyone who has appeared — especially those with a working knowledge of WhatsApp. Instead of using the process to learn vital lessons which could be used to tether the country should this ever happen again, it’s been little but a modern version of the stocks.
Britain has some history with inquiries, and both the Cullen Report into handguns after the Dunblane massacre in 1996 and the foot-and-mouth inquiry in 2001 resulted in meaningful action. Others, like the Chilcot Inquiry into Iraq, were perhaps less successful. This current one already looks like a complete waste of time. The people in charge last time will never be let near working machinery again, so what’s the point? Surely we should be looking at processes, damage limitation and cost. I would also suggest that this vertical deserves its own ministry; a pandemic is more likely to invade the UK than any alien force, and so we should be prepared. It’s all very well saying the DCMS should be split up (and it should; both sport and digital deserve their own departments), but we would be far better equipped to deal with a pandemic if we actually had a department devoted to it.
A similar inquiry in Sweden recommended a national crisis management group, and I see no reason why we shouldn’t have one here. It could be a shadow Cobra organisation, which would encourage far more international best practice. Trying to predict another pandemic is a bit like predicting a terror attack; much better to equip ourselves for when one inevitably happens. After all, it’s likely to be a lot worse than the last one.
Of course, this isn’t actually the end. Not at all. Baroness Hallett, who is running the show, says she intends to publish the report for the first area of work “as soon as possible” — hopefully by early summer 2024. The next public hearings for the third area of examination — the impact of the pandemic on all the healthcare systems across the UK — are expected to run for three months in the autumn of 2024, and the whole process is unlikely to end before 2027 (and it’s already cost well over £100 million). Which means the inquiry will clash with next year’s iteration of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. So when the time comes you can choose whichever jungle you like.
