A Curate’s Egg of a Public Inquiry

We’re publishing a guest post by Dr. David Livermore, Professor of Medical Microbiology at UEA, about the official public inquiry into the British Government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which he regards as a ‘curate’s egg’ – good in parts, and the bad bits aren’t all that bad. (You can see the Draft Terms of Reference, published on Thursday, here.) The fact that it will be overseen by Baroness Hallett (pictured) is not a disaster – she acted as coroner for the victims of the 7/7 bombings and seems like an honest broker. Nevertheless, Professor Livermore had identified four omissions in the inquiry, such as this one:

First, and foremost: democratic accountability and the use of advisory committees. From the start of the pandemic until mid-2021 we were governed by a War Cabinet comprising Messrs Johnson, Raab, Gove and Hancock, along with Drs Whitty and Vallance. Their decisions were predicated on SAGE’s groupthink. Parliamentary scrutiny was suspended. Churchill’s dictum of ‘experts on tap, not on top’ was forgotten. My view – as a citizen, not as a Professor of Medical Microbiology – is that this should never have happened. Government is to govern; Parliament to scrutinise and expert committees to provide advice.

But, if Government is to subcontract its functions to unelected technocrats, these should include a range of specialities. SAGE is completely dominated by modellers, behaviourists, and public health medicine, with a single fixation on COVID. They say that it isn’t their remit to consider the wider societal effects of their advice.

Handing control of anything complex, let alone a country, to monomaniacs is generally unwise.

We’ve included David’s piece in a new section on the right-hand menu called “The Public Inquiry”. I expect we’ll be publishing a great number of pieces under this heading in the near future.

Worth reading in full.