24th November 2021
This is just a brief post to set out some general thoughts on Covid and the accountability of government.
During this pandemic, the government has done and not done various things, and at some point the government should give an account of what it did and did not do (and is doing and not doing).
Because of the sense of emergency, and because information has often been incomplete, it has been difficult to hold the government to account on a real time basis.
The government has put off any formal inquiry until (at least) next year.
And the other means of holding the government to account – the courts, the parliamentary ombudsman, coroners’ inquests, parliamentary committees – all have their limitations and remits.
No doubt there are some politicians in (or previously in) government who want to push any inquiry as far as possible.
They will want to get to the head-shaking, sad-faced lessons learned and benefit of hindsight stage with little or no affect on their political careers.
But as it stands, we are nearly two years into perhaps the single biggest ever peacetime exercise of public policy, and there has been almost no real time public accountability for the various government decisions and actions (and indecisions and inactions).
And so this episode shows the sheer accountability gap in the constitution of the United Kingdom.
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A comprehensive account of who did and said what and when from January to September 2020 is on http://www.diaryofcovidpandemic.com.
Even beyond the high profile decisions and non-decisions on lockdowns, vaccine developments, there are so many elements to probe:
– PPE shortages and re-classifications to suit availability of stocks rather than safety
– messaging misdirection – eg masks were of “dubious utility” until enough were available
– the selective reporting of statistics (eg on testing) – and when cautioned by ONS, making changes to further frustrate accountability
– £37bn set aside for Test and Trace. A staggeringly large amount. No accounting for how it was budgeted nor how it has been spent.
How can any single enquiry cover all this?
One issue that I would like to believe would be covered by a public inquiry is the extent to which the government has been ‘following the science’. I am not hopeful, because the government has done a very good job of manipulating scientists into covering for them.
For example, during the summer, the government had ran low on vaccine supplies. This was because it was at the back of the queue for Pfizer and had stopped using the Astra Zeneca vaccine for younger patients.
The govt did not have enough vaccine to vaccinate under 16s as other countries were doing. But rather than having to explain the position, our scientists very conveniently came up with reasons not to approve vaccinating children.
Once Pfizer delivered more vaccine in August, the scientists duly obliged in coming up with reasons why vaccinating children was now a good idea.
The government’s attempt to cover up Exercise Alice, rather than using its recommendations, seems to be like the behaviour of the Soviet Union to cover up its incompetence. So why isn’t this a massive scandal and in all the headlines? If it was, it might encourage a bit of holding to account.
Here’s demonstrated utter incompetence and a bare-faced attempted cover-up. So why so little attention? I can’t find on the BBC. It did briefly get into the Daily Mail, but only the early story of its existence, not the later story when we found out what it said, which demonstrated the incompetence. We can read it in the BMJ, Guardian and Private Eye, but these have more limited influence.
Two themes. Firstly would I have done any better? Probably not, a bad flu year is no reason to panic. Excess deaths likely to pan out about 20,000 then back to normal. But it did not work out like that. UK was in a fix because we run the NHS mean and hot so beds/population on the low side, a bad start. The PPE scandal arose out of panic and was not only incompetently run but venally run too – a disgrace. I would not have allowed that.
Re a public enquiry. I suppose we should have a stewards enquiry over how it went and drag the main actors in for a good slagging. But I am sure it will take years, cost £millions and be another treasure-fest for the undeserving to produce a report never to be read. Far better to ID the top 3 and publicly humiliate them. Dragged naked round the country on a hurdle will do.
There will be no meaningful inquiry until this current Government are out of power.
Whether it comes from the Sunak Adminstration looking to shovel all the blame onto The Johnson and his gaggle of gormless goons, or a new Labour government wanting to establish their own position, is another question entirely.
At least the Good Law Project – https://goodlawproject.org/news – is trying to do something about this. See https://goodlawproject.org/news/conservative-politicians-vip-lane