London
CNN
—
That of Great Britain Consult Covid it was supposed to bring closure to people who lost loved ones to the pandemic. Instead, it has become a political circus that could hurt both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.
The investigation, which began taking evidence on Tuesday, had been overshadowed for weeks series of spines between Sunak, the current prime minister, and Johnson, who resigned in disgrace last summer.
The first of these questions is directly related to the consultation. Sunak and his government are legally challenging the investigation’s right to request personal information from people who were directly involved in decision-making during the pandemic. This means anything from private WhatsApp messages to private journals.
The government says it wants to block it because it could set a precedent where irrelevant information could enter the public domain that could have an adverse effect on how decision-makers communicate during a crisis.
Johnson undermined Sunak by directly handing over his own information to the investigation.
Deborah Doyle, spokeswoman for Families Grieving for Covid-19 Justice, said of the government’s legal action: “For the Cabinet Office to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money suing its own public inquiry to not be able to access critical evidence is absolutely obscene… They are showing the exact same disregard for ordinary people that was so disastrous when the pandemic broke out in the first place.
The second, and probably more explosive, piece of trash that distracts from the investigation revolves around a parliamentary commission looking specifically at whether or not Johnson knowingly misled lawmakers when he said that during the pandemic, all rules were observed valid at all times.
This is the committee’s inquiry into the infamous Partygate scandal, which led to Johnson being fined by the police for breaking Covid rules. Sunak was also fined for the same incident.
Johnson had initially told parliament that all the rules were followed at all times. Even after it became clear that this was not true, Johnson maintained that he did not knowingly mislead parliament. The committee disagreed, recommending this week that Johnson be suspended from parliament for 90 days and not be allowed back into the building, which ex-members are entitled to.
Having seen the report before its publication, Johnson resigned as a member of parliament and continued to accuse the committee of being politically motivated. He still protests his innocence and has described the committee as “less contemptible”.
Although Johnson has ostensibly resigned over the committee’s report, it was expected that Johnson might resign after Sunak rejected certain people Johnson wanted to elevate to the UK’s upper house of parliament, the House of Lords. Sunak’s allies believe Johnson simply wanted to cause the Prime Minister a headache. Johnson’s office denies this.
All this drama, of course, brings no consolation to those who lost loved ones to Covid-19.
“The families of the bereaved want the government to learn lessons that could save lives in the future. All these attempts to save face are frankly shocking,” Jack Rodgers, also of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaign, told CNN.
Johnson and Sunak will deny they are trying to save face. But the investigation has the potential to cause them both enormous damage in the public eye.
Christina Pagel, from the Clinical Operations Research Unit at University College London, believes the research could provide an unflattering view of what happened after the first wave of Covid-19 hit the UK.
“As of the summer of 2020, we knew a lot about how the disease spread, but the government did not consistently use the summer or the time during the lockdowns to put in place better protective measures, such as an air cleaner or improved isolation support.”
At the time, the UK had rules that changed based on infection rates in local areas. In some cases, this meant that people could gather indoors in groups of six. It was around this time that Sunak introduced his “Eat Out to Help You” program, where meals out would be subsidized in an attempt to boost the hospitality industry.
Leading scientists have said the scheme was not supported by experts and is expected to be a key focus of research into whether or not encouraging such mixing led to the virus spreading further.
Pagel also points specifically to the manner in which recruitment contracts were awarded to individuals who have since been found to have ties to the Conservative Party. The government implemented a fast-track scheme to secure personal protective equipment, which has since come under scrutiny and led to allegations of cronyism.
“It is one thing to act quickly in a crisis; it’s another to give your friends lots of money even though they don’t know what they’re doing. There were many other eminently qualified people volunteering to provide PPE,” he says.
The government argues that at the time it was simply trying to avoid running out of PPE and did everything it could to secure it.
CNN spoke to several people who worked in government during the pandemic about their concerns about the investigation. Most are concerned about how unvarnished records of conversations will look to the public: ministers arguing and big names cracking up. Others are concerned that the true level of chaos in Downing Street, especially at the start of the pandemic, will embarrass everyone involved rather than just those in charge.
A senior government official at the time described how the teams deliberately tried to keep their work away from Johnson, who they say was often erratic and would get in the way of what they were doing. This included the creation of workspaces in different buildings.
Ultimately, it is inevitable that this investigation will put the people who ran the country at the time under new scrutiny. And much of what comes out is likely to be embarrassing. Which, of course, somewhat downplays the human tragedies at the center of this story.
Lorelei King lost her husband early in the pandemic. She is watching the consultation unfold with some concern.
“They refuse to call any of the victims to testify directly. We have presented 20 potential witnesses. This is not about our experience, this is about presenting relevant evidence,” he told CNN.
“On the first day, the inquiry played a film about the impact of the virus on the bereaved. Baroness Hallett, who is leading the inquiry, said she had learned something new from the film. So here it is, this (new evidence) comes from individual direct testimony.”
King told CNN that she and the nursing home where her husband, who had Alzheimer’s lived, agreed to end in-person visits before the government shutdown.
One day, she noticed on a video call that her husband’s breathing was unusual. “Days later he was dead. I got to see his body briefly, then men in hazmat suits came and took him away.”
For King, the political drama that has recently dominated the conversation about Covid in the UK has made the grieving process even more difficult.
“The scab is ripped off every time there’s a story about parties, about people breaking the rules, about how they want to handle the consultation. It’s certainly decentered the human costs. I think the bad guys have a particular view and the people who they don’t understand why we can’t move on or say, ‘oh shit, it was just a birthday cake’, I can only assume they haven’t lost anyone to Covid.”
