It was when the Covid-19 public inquiry’s lead counsel flashed up an organisation chart of the UK’s pre-pandemic preparedness structures that everyone packed into the west London hearing rooms realised the scale of the task ahead.
At the top of the slide dating from August 2019 was the Cabinet Office and in the middle was the Department of Health and Social Care, but beyond that was a dizzying tangle of dotted lines, multi-coloured arrows and unfathomable acronyms – more than 100 different bodies and all apparently with a role protecting Britain from deadly viruses.
It looked “much more like a bowl of spaghetti than a clear and coordinated framework for a cogent national response”, the lawyer for the Trades Union Congress remarked to the inquiry chair, Heather Hallett. It was hard to disagree, and it is now for Lady Hallett to untangle the mess. She must determine why the UK was not better prepared – and amid signs a buck-passing blame game is already under way, she will need all her evident resolve.
The first day of the evidential hearings began with more than 100 bereaved and survivors gathered outside the inquiry. One read out a long list of some of the dead – John Smith, Michael Savage, Cheryl Dinsdall, Hen Douglas, Saeed Habib Zayidi among them. Others clutched framed portraits of their lost loved ones, smiling at family birthdays and on day trips.
“We just feel really emotional,” said Lyn Jones, whose husband, Gareth, 66, died in March 2021. “Now we will get answers, at least we hope. We want to be listened to. That is why we are here today. At the moment we are not being listened to.”
The problem is that more of the bereaved relatives want to give evidence than are being allowed to. Time is tight and there are so many people who have lost someone, so Hallett is resisting.
Inside the inquiry room, packed with ranks of grey-suited lawyers and bereaved family members wearing the red of the Covid memorial heart symbol, Hallett said: “I am listening to them.
“I’ve done my very best within the constraints upon me of time, resources and my terms of reference to fulfil that promise. I know that there are those who feel that the inquiry has not sufficiently recognised their loss or listened to them in the way that they feel appropriate. But I hope that they will better understand as the inquiry progresses, the very difficult balance I have had to strike.”
Some people will be called and there is a parallel “listening exercise” that will collate anonymised reports for the inquiry to use. But it is not enough for everyone.
The first day of evidence came three years, four months and two weeks after the first two UK Covid cases were confirmed on 30 January 2020, two Chinese nationals staying in York.
It began with a film of testimonies from some of the bereaved relatives that quickly plunged those listening back to that harrowing spring.
One person described a care home death: “The only thing we could do was be outside his window in the icy sleety rain.” Another told of their father’s lips going blue after he caught Covid from a passenger in his taxi. The child of a man who died in hospital after getting Covid on the ward spoke of the guilt that he was denied “a good death”. And a daughter told how she went to collect her dead mother’s possessions only to be told they must be burned – “mummy’s wee glasses, her nighties and dressing gown”. Men in white PPE suits policed her funeral. Without a “send off” she felt she failed her mother.
After all that, it almost felt redundant when Hugo Keith KC, counsel to the inquiry, said: “The Covid-19 pandemic left in its wake death, misery and incalculable loss.”
It “changed lives on a scale unseen in modern history,” he said. “Jobs and businesses have been destroyed and livelihoods have been taken away. The pandemic disrupted the education of children and young people … societal damage in terms of exacerbation of inequalities and the denial of access to opportunity has been widespread. Its impact will be felt for decades to come.”
Yes, it was a “natural disaster”, he said, but the “key issue is whether that impact that I have described was inevitable”.
The inquiry will be examining in detail choices made by governments since around 2010. Pete Weatherby KC, counsel for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, was insistent the government could not claim this was an unforeseeable “black swan” event. There had been pandemics such as Sars and Mers and there were pandemic planning exercises.
David Cameron, who is due to be cross-examined before the summer break, warned at a 2015 G7 summit that the “world must be far better prepared for future health pandemics”. The former prime minister cited the risk of a “more virulent disease in future transmitted by coughing, like flu or measles for example, would have a much more devastating impact”.
So why was there was no “whole system plan” for tackling a pandemic. It was left to the tangle of structures in the organisation chart, Weatherby said.
“Little consideration was given within pandemic planning policies and strategies to detect and contain the spread of the disease, but rather the emphasis was on how to respond in a situation where there was already significant mortality and morbidity,” he said.
Many of the bereaved families who are living with the impact of that mortality will be back at the inquiry on Wednesday to hear what lawyers for the Department of Health and Social Care have to say. Their journey for answers looks likely to last at least three years. But at least now, it has begun.
