Families bereaved by Covid want Boris Johnson to relinquish control over which issues will be investigated in the pandemic public inquiry, alleging he is compromised by allegations of lockdown-breaking at Downing Street.
The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group fears the current arrangement, where Johnson has a final say over inquiry topics, could allow him to water down examination of how his own conduct and that of senior officials may have undermined public trust in infection control measures that the bereaved say cost lives.
The group, which represents more than 6,000 families, is calling on the prime minister to commit to accepting terms of reference presented by the chair to the inquiry, Lady Hallett, after a public consultation. Under the Inquiries Act it is for the minister in formal charge to set the terms of reference, in this case the prime minister.
“It’s becoming increasingly clear that it’s not good enough for him to just take the chair’s recommendations for the terms of reference as advice and he needs to commit to implementing them in full,” said Hannah Brady, a member of the bereaved group. “The fact his office is under police investigation for breaching the rules shows he is compromised and cannot be allowed to have a final say on what the inquiry looks into.”
More than 159,000 people in the UK have died within 28 days of a positive Covid test and more than 180,000 had Covid on their death certificates.
The call for control over the inquiry’s terms of reference to be handed to Hallett was backed by the Labour party.
“This inquiry is one of the most important in living history yet it is being supervised by a government paralysed by total chaos,” said Fleur Anderson, the shadow paymaster general. “If the prime minister had any respect for the bereaved families he would accept and implement the chair’s recommendations in full, not half-heartedly or under advisement. We cannot allow an administration currently under police investigation to mark its own homework on how it handled the pandemic.”
A government spokesperson said: “As the prime minister has previously stated, the Covid inquiry is set to begin its work in spring 2022. Bereaved families and the wider public will be consulted on the inquiry’s terms of reference before they are finalised.”
Johnson wrote to Brady on Thursday reiterating his apology over the Downing Street gatherings. The death certificate of Brady’s father, Shaun, was signed on 20 May 2020, the same day a “bring your own booze” party was held in the Downing Street garden. Downing Street officials and Johnson have received questionnaires from the Met police as part of “Operation Hillman”, an investigation into events on eight dates between May 2020 to April 2021.
Brady wrote to Johnson on 11 January after he claimed he did not know if he had attended the garden party. He later admitted he had. Brady accused him of treating it as “one big joke”.
His reply, a month later, said: “Following the publication of Sue Gray’s report on 31 January, I apologised personally for the things that we simply did not get right and how this matter has been handled. I want to reiterate that apology to you.”
But he said it would be “inappropriate for me to comment on particular dates while the Metropolitan police is currently carrying out its investigation”.
The call for Johnson to step aside from setting the public inquiry terms of reference comes amid signs of slow progress in setting up one of the most wide-ranging and politically challenging public fact-finding processes in British legal history.
In May 2021 Johnson announced that a statutory public inquiry would begin in spring this year and on 15 December he named Hallett chair, but it is looking increasingly unlikely that proceedings will start anytime soon, with some observers believing it may not begin until late summer.
In December Johnson told parliament that after consulting the devolved administrations on the terms of reference for the inquiry – with Scotland having already announced its own inquiry – he would publish these in draft “in the new year”. Two months later they remain under wraps.
