Closing statements are delivered in the UK Covid-19 Inquiry

Public hearings in Module 1 of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry completed on Wednesday 19 July 2023, with oral closing statements from 12 core participants. Module 1 is entitled ‘Resilience and preparedness’ and is designated to consider the UK’s state of preparedness for the pandemic.

The Trades Union Congress (‘TUC’) is a core participant in Module 1. The TUC’s aims in Module 1 were to: explore the impact of austerity upon resilience and preparedness; document the impact of Covid-19 upon workers and, in particular, the disproportionate impact upon those in elementary occupations and from black and minority ethnic backgrounds; and highlight the range of sectors impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sam Jacobs is lead counsel on the TUC team, alongside Ruby Peacock who is junior counsel. They are instructed by Gerard Stilliard and Harry Thompson, of Thompsons Solicitors. In Module 1, the TUC has worked in partnership with the Wales TUC, the Scottish TUC, and the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. 

In closing, Sam Jacobs commented: ‘My lady, in this module concerning pandemic planning and preparedness, what we have learnt in respect of a plan for a pandemic such as Covid-19 has been surprisingly straight forward: quite simply, there was no plan.  Planning was, as Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies put it, “monomaniacally focused on pandemic flu” and, even then, was focused on managing the dead rather than protecting the living.’ 

Mr Jacobs further highlighted that the pandemic had a disproportionate impact upon lines of socioeconomic disadvantage, and along the intersection of such disadvantage with precarious work, ethnicity, disability, age, gender, caring responsibilities, and poor health. He noted that that unequal impact was foreseeable – for example in the 2009 swine flu pandemic the mortality rate in the most deprived 20% of England’s neighbourhoods was over three-times higher than in the least deprived 20% – and could have been mitigated by planning which considered the known unequal impact of whole system shocks. However, as both Katherine Hammond, on behalf of the Cabinet Office, and Sir Christopher Wormald, on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care, accepted during oral evidence, pandemic planning entirely failed to consider the inevitable disproportionate impacts, save some consideration of clinical vulnerabilities, such as diabetes and heart disease, and a piece of work in relation to the prison population. The TUC therefore put forward four key points in respect of pandemic planning for the safety of frontline workers:

(a) Pandemic planning needs to consider health and safety measures across a range of workplaces.

(b) It needs to be supported by an effective and funded health and safety regulator.

(c) It should be achieved in partnership with employers and workers, via representative unions.

(d) Implementing points (a) to (c) above will preserve lives of those at work, and will ameliorate some of the uneven impact of the pandemic.

During opening statements  made in June, the TUC was pleased to see that the devastating impact of austerity had become a major focus of Module 1. That theme has continued throughout witness evidence and closing statements from core participants. A range of witnesses provided detailed evidence to the Inquiry on the impact of austerity, and witnesses including David Cameron, George Osborne and Jeremy Hunt were challenged by Counsel to the Inquiry, Hugo Keith KC and Kate Blackwell KC, on the impact of cuts to public budgets.

As the TUC pointed out in closing: ‘The unavoidable context for considering the resilience of services going into the pandemic is austerity. […] What we described as a striking feature of the evidence, that so many will consistently describe the disastrous consequence of austerity, has proven to be so in the oral hearings. The only real exception has been the evidence of Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne.  To us, their evidence had the feeling of having come from a distant island in which NHS staff numbers were high, NHS satisfaction was high, and the output of public services had the good fortune of bearing no relation to budgetary input.  It was not a picture we recognised nor, does it appear, one recognised by any other witness in the Inquiry.’

The TUC team were successful in a pre-rule 10 application to ask questions directly of Jeremy Hunt. Mr Jacobs questioned Mr Hunt regarding capacity and resilience of the NHS going into the pandemic.’

The Rt Hon Heather Hallett DBE, Chair of the Inquiry, has committed to delivering recommendations as soon as possible by way of a Module 1 interim report. She stated at the end of public hearings that ‘the hope is it will be published by early summer next year’.

The TUC has also been granted core participant status in other active modules: Module 2, which covers core decision making and political governance during the pandemic; Modules 2(a), 2(b), 2(c), which considers the same topic in respect of each of the devolved nations; and in Module 3, which considers the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on healthcare systems in the 4 nations of the UK.

Future modules are expected to cover a number of topics, including: the care sector; health inequalities and the impact of Covid-19; education, children and young persons; and other public services, including frontline delivery by key workers.

For further enquiries, please contact our Senior Civil Clerk Sian Wilkins.