Hide nothing, avoid ‘tittle tattle’ and focus on substance: what can Ireland learn from the UK’s ‘farcical’ Covid inquiry?

Of the 83 full public inquiries opened since 1990 in the UK, its Covid-19 inquiry is by far the broadest and, at an estimated cost of £150 million (€173.7m), its most expensive. It may also be its most important, as it investigates the reasons for the UK’s staggering Covid death toll of 233,000.

Yet despite its gravity, the inquiry, chaired by Baroness Heather Hallett, has become bogged down in accusations that it appears more interested in WhatsApp political “tittle tattle” than in finding out what went wrong, and how to stop it happening again.

“It is a farce – a spectacle of hysteria, name-calling and trivialities,” said Carl Heneghan, a University of Oxford epidemiologist who gave evidence to the inquiry and is critical of its methods. He has accused its top lawyers of being “uninterested in substance, and obsessed with reading out rude words found in other people’s messages”.

The UK government has also faced accusations of undermining public faith in the inquiry, after the Cabinet Office tied Hallett up in court actions last year over granting access to certain records. Perhaps the greatest lesson the Irish Government could learn for its inquiry from the experience in the UK is to avoid being seen to stymie it.

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Former prime minister Boris Johnson first announced there would be a full public inquiry into the UK’s handling of Covid in May 2021 when the virus was still in full swing. Hallett was appointed in December that year and, following a public consultation, final terms were agreed in the summer of 2022.

It has full legal powers to compel witnesses and evidence, and also to apportion blame. It sits in public and in private; it is not expected to finish its public hearings until mid-2026. It will report its findings in chunks along the way as it ploughs through the six modules announced so far.

Ireland is already more than two years behind the inquiry in the UK, which is already viewed as slow. Publishing interim reports may help Irish authorities speed up the process.

Given the enormity of Covid’s impact and the emotive backdrop, Hallett has tried to balance the needs of her investigation with one of the inquiry’s core functions: giving a voice to victims and their families, and ensuring they get closure. A retired judge, she has experience in this area, having chaired the inquiry into the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005.

The focus of victims’ families has been on the public hearings and, in particular, the module examining political decision-making. The inquiry sat in public for this module between October and December last year. Witnesses included Johnson and Rishi Sunak, the UK’s current prime minister, who was chancellor of the exchequer during the pandemic.

In an attempt to portray independence from the UK’s establishment, the public hearings are held in a bland building near Paddington station in west London, well away from Westminster and the main legal district of Temple. Security is tight but protest is facilitated – victims’ families fill zones at the front of the building, holding placards and banners. Witnesses, including Johnson and Sunak, entered and left by the front door. Family members and the ordinary public outnumber journalists in the hearings room by 10 to one. Proceedings are also live-streamed online, albeit with a three-minute delay.

[ Covid-19: Inquiry into Ireland’s handling of pandemic to hear from bereaved families ]

Yet Hallett struggled to control some protesters during the evidence of certain politicians such as Johnson and Matt Hancock, the former health secretary. During Johnson’s public stint in the chair, she halted proceedings to eject several victim family members. She has sought the views of a swathe of Covid survivors and victims’ families through an online consultation, Every Story Matters, which has recorded testimony from the public.

Several commentators in the UK have questioned the choice of Hugo Keith, one of the UK’s top trial lawyers, as the inquiry’s leading counsel who questions witnesses. At times during the public hearings with high-profile witnesses such as Hancock and Johnson, even Hallett appeared to tire of his combative style, telling him several times to move on.

“One of the problems with this inquiry is that it has become a trial led by lawyers. But who is on trial?” said John Bryson, an academic from the University of Birmingham who has researched the UK’s Covid response. “The inquiry is searching for those to blame, [when] really the point of it should be to have a rapid evaluation of the broad outcomes of the response.”

The scope of the UK’s inquiry is unprecedented, covering almost every aspect of the state’s governance from health policy to education, political governance and economic management. Yet, as Emma Norris of the Institute for Government think tank in London has pointed out, it is unclear whether it will lead to change, as it faces the same challenge as all other public inquiries: no matter what it finds and recommends, it has no power to compel policymakers to take action.

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