The first public hearings as part of the investigation into the British government’s management of the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed at least 220,000 victims since March 2020, were to begin on Tuesday, June 13, in London. Launched late, in July 2022, by Boris Johnson, after months of lobbying associations of families of victims, this investigation is the most ambitious of its kind ever launched in the United Kingdom. It is already being compared to that on Bloody Sunday, the massacre by the British army of Irish civilians, in Derry/LondonDerry in 1972. Decided in 1998 by Tony Blair, it lasted ten years, cost more than 200 million pounds British taxpayer, but was an important step in the Northern Irish reconciliation process.
Chaired by a respected magistrate – Baroness Heather Hallett, a former Court of Appeal judge, who led the investigation into the London attacks of July 7, 2005 – this commission of inquiry into the management of the epidemic of Covid-19 does not have the authority to bring criminal or civil charges against individuals, and its recommendations are only indicative.
But it is endowed with considerable powers: it can summon people to testify under oath, demand all “relevant” documents in the context of its work, including private correspondence. Experts, lawyers and crisis management specialists will first be heard this week, as well as Sir Michael Marmot, a leading specialist in health inequalities, on June 16.
Investigations until 2026
But as part of the commission’s work on the country’s state of preparedness when the pandemic hit it in March 2020, key policymakers will also likely be interviewed by mid-July: those who presided over the fate of the United Kingdom in the 2010s, when the country should have been on alert. The Commission publishes its schedule of hearings only from one week to the next, but all the national media are expecting summonses from the former Prime Minister (between 2010 and 2016) David Cameron, from his Chancellor of the ‘Exchequer, George Osborne, or Minister of Health between 2012 and 2018, Jeremy Hunt, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
During the next three modules – decision-making process and political governance, impact of the pandemic on health systems and finally vaccination campaigns and treatments – the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, his Minister of Health Matt Hancock, or again Rishi Sunak, his Chancellor of the Exchequer until mid-2022. In the summer of 2020, to help revive the completely devastated hotel and restaurant sector, Mr. Sunak had promoted the “eat out to help out”, a system of discounts to incentivize Britons to consume, which had been criticized for contributing to a second wave of infections…
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