UK - Covid inquiry starts to examine Boris Johnson's pandemic decisions

Controversial: Politics & Govt Politics & Govt: In The News
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The UK inquiry into the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has started to investigate decisions made by prime minister Boris Johnson and his senior advisers in early 2020. Decisions over the timing of lockdown and testing delays will be scrutinised. The inquiry was recently widened to include a focus on children.

The latest area of the inquiry’s investigations, known as Module 2, will focus on decisions and announcements made by the UK government at Westminster between early January and late March 2020. During this stage, official documents will be sought and evidence on government decision-making will be examined.

Later, the inquiry will also look at how decisions were made up until early 2022, and the handling of the pandemic in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Module 1, launched in July, is examining the resilience and preparedness of the UK for a pandemic before 2020. Formal hearings with witnesses are set to start next spring, and the inquiry is inviting individuals or organisations with a specific interest, known as core participants, to register. This will allow them to get access to relevant evidence and make statements at hearings.

Baroness Heather Hallett, who is chairing the inquiry, said: “My team and I will establish what was understood about Covid-19 at the time, what information was available in each of the four UK nations and how and why key decisions were made, especially early in the pandemic. I will be taking evidence next year to build a full picture of the challenges faced by the government and how it chose to confront them.”

The inquiry will hold preliminary hearings in the autumn. They are likely to involve lawyers representing different parties, including those who have registered as core participants.

Slowly but surely … :books:

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Aside from the fact that they didn’t follow rules themselves and delayed lockdown a week (resulting in needless deaths), I don’t think the government handled the remainder of the pandemic badly at all. The vaccination effort needs to be recognised as a great achievement. The furlow was a great way to stop the whole infrastructure falling apart. The NHS (which the tories are now trying their best to destroy) did a fabulous job in maintaining infection control and trying to work around the restrictions.

So overall I don’t think any other leader would have done anything differently. These were difficult times and tough decisions. Easy to look back and criticise. I’m not a Bo fan but would you have felt in better hands with Sunak or Truss? I worry more about the future than forensically analysing the past.

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The Federal Government will call a royal commission or similar inquiry into Australia’s response to the COVID pandemic “as soon as practicable” - an inquiry which would mostly focus on the response of the Federal Government but would also look at state governments’ responses to the pandemic, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said.

Survey after survey has shown that most Australians think that the State Governments handled the pandemic far better than the Federal Government, the latter failing to order vaccines early enough, failed to have effective quarantine arrangements under the Biosecurity Act and failed to co-ordinate any responses with the states.

The main criticism aimed at the state governments is that they acted independently without consulting either the federal government or each other but generally citizens of each state were happy with their government’s response (as the state elections showed).

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Hi

I am not very sure that I have the stomach for months of he said she said.

Can it all go away please

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I’ve cleaned up this thread. I think Bruce’s post is fine - it’s only natural that since we are a site with people from all over the world people will sometimes want to share what’s happening in their own countries in similar situations. If those posts become large forks we can always split them into separate threads.