2023

We have been deeply concerned by a number of aspects of the Covid Inquiry and so in December 2023 we issued a legal letter to the Inquiry formally reserving our rights to take action against it in the future. Some of our key concerns were reiterated in this letter that we organised to go to the Prime Minister from a group of 17 parliamentarians. In summary, we fear that the approach of the Covid Inquiry evidenced in Module 2 at the end of 2023 has failed to identify the right lessons to inform future pandemic responses and risks undermining the validity of its future findings by giving the appearance that it holds a predetermined view of both the nature of the pandemic and of the desirability and effectiveness of the UK’s particular response.

We are also very concerned that the Inquiry’s examination of decision-making processes in Module 2 failed in its entirety to consider serious ethical failures in decision making, a topic that has been documented in detail in
The Accountability Deficit.

2022

We successfully campaigned for the UK Covid Inquiry explicitly to consider the impacts of policy decisions on children, after they were shamefully omitted from the original Terms of Reference. It is essential that the Covid Inquiry scrutinises key decisions impacting children and young people such as lockdowns, school closures and education-related interventions, isolation rules, social distancing regulations (e.g. ‘Rule of Six’), enforced masking, mass testing and medical and ethical issues surrounding the vaccination of children, including vaccine approval and rollout, informed consent and coercive marketing to young people.