Covid inquiry told it must look at whether Tory cuts hampered pandemic readiness
The long-awaited Covid inquiry should look at whether Tory austerity impacted the UK's preparedness for the Covid pandemic, a hearing was told today.
A lawyer representing bereaved families said cutbacks should be considered - and warned those who lost loved ones haven't been able to share vital insight about "obviously foreseeable" issues.
Nearly 50 politicians and civil servants have so far been told they must give evidence at the upcoming inquiry, Baroness Heather Hallett - who is heading the probe - was told.
Baroness Hallett heard calls for the first public hearings - scheduled for late May - to be put back to June so that the names of junior government staff can be removed from documents.
The TUC has called for austerity to be considered, and lawyer Pete Weatherby KC, representing the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice group, voiced his support.
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Baroness Heather Hallett is heading the Covid Inquiry (PA)He told a preliminary hearing: "We've liaised with the TUC legal team and we support their submission that a witness should be called to look at the impact of austerity on preparedness."
Mr Weatherby also said many who lost ones haven't been given the chance to share their knowledge about preparedness in the early days of the pandemic.
He said: "So far there's been no mention of selecting family members with experiences which may illustrate this systemic effect of preparedness failures to give evidence."
Mr Weatherby said many families could share insight about risk assessment for health workers and isolation of patients in care homes.
He said: "It's our understanding that there were no measures to risk assess frontline healthcare workers which included an assessment of the likely disproportionate effect on people from particular ethnic backgrounds.
The government's official Covid death toll stands at more than 217,000 (Alahna Kindred)"Another might be the effect of a failure to have advanced planning for the necessity to isolate patients coming into care homes or to address the obviously foreseeable problems of Covid being brought from care home to care home by agency workers.
"These are matters which family members may well have important direct evidence."
He also called on companies involved in the inquiry to declare whether they played any role in the government's Covid response.
It comes after reports that PR firms M&C Saatchi and 23Red were hired to work on the inquiry's "listening exercise" - despite having previously worked for the government during the crisis.
Baroness Hallett told Mr Weatherby: "I do undertake to consider very carefully the submissions you've made today and in writing."
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Becky Kummer, a spokesperson for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, said: "23Red were working with the Cabinet Office through the pandemic and have an obvious conflict of interest.
"They shouldn’t be anywhere near the Covid Inquiry, never mind being responsible for how it reaches those worst affected by the pandemic."
She said families fear being "being sidelined by the very inquiry that we put our heart and souls into securing after losing those closest to us".
Ms Kummer said: "If the inquiry is serious about engaging with those worst affected by Covid-19, it must commit to listening to the bereaved in person on each day of the hearings.”
Hugo Keith KC, counsel for the inquiry, requested a delay so that "thousands of manual redactions" can be made to documents and emails related to UK's preparedness and resilience for a pandemic.
He told the inquiry's chairwoman: "As I cannot guarantee that, as was provisionally hoped to be the case, that the core participants will receive almost all the disclosure to which they are entitled by mid-March, I must invite you to consider putting back the provisional start date of May to early June.
"In the general scheme of your inquiry, this is a fairly modest adjournment application.
"But it will allow, if you grant it, a proper opportunity for the core participants to get on top of the materials and, as a necessary part of that process, time to get the documents to them."
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