Covid inquiry: We must not blow chance to learn lessons from pandemic

Last week unfolded in the most unedifying way with former government advisers desperate to get their excuses in first; to tell the world that they were right, and everyone else was wrong.

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There was little sense that those once at the heart of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street cabal viewed this as an exercise in introspection; or – more importantly – that they had come to it seeking to understand what could be done to better protect us – physically, mentally and financially – in the future.

Shocking though it was to see the chaos catalogued in profanities, there were few surprises to be had from the testimony of Johnson’s then-Chief Adviser Dominic Cummings. We already knew Boris Johnson was too busy with the business of holidaying/self-aggrandisement to pay much attention as Covid spread across Europe; that he favoured herd immunity; that he fancied himself as the mayor in Jaws keeping the beaches open; that he saw the pandemic as some kind of demographic cleanser.

We didn’t require to hear it from the man who effectively put him into power, and who didn’t publicly disavow him until his own spectacular Barnard Castle fall from grace. Indeed Cummings’ evidence – with its tone of moral superiority – told us much more about Cummings, and his desire for exculpation, than it did about Johnson.

The same could be said of former Director of Communications Lee Cain who described the pandemic as “the wrong crisis for Johnson’s skill set”, as if crises exist solely to test the mettle of Prime Ministers; as if any of us believe Johnson would have dithered less in the face of a tsunami or a civil war.

The WhatsApp exchanges – between Cummings, Cain and Cabinet Secretary Simon Case among others – also laid bare, for anyone who had not already grasped it, the toxic macho culture at the heart of the administration.

All those testosterone-fuelled “alpha males” competing for the title of “tosseur-du-jour” were never going to foster a culture of collaboration, or a safe space where it felt possible to say: “Maybe I’m wrong about this. Maybe you’re right. Shall we all just pause for a moment to consider the complexities.”

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As then, so now. Cummings did not come to the inquiry for an examination of his conscience or an act of contrition, but to tell the world he alone foresaw the catastrophe that was about to unfold (his second sight being, presumably, sharper than his first).

Because his indictment of Johnson is more than justified, you have to keep reminding yourself that – at the height of lockdown – he and Cain and Case were behaving, not as voices of reason trying to rein in an incompetent, vacillating leader, but as elites to whom the rules did not apply. This is important not only because Downing Street revels were being held as the Queen mourned alone, but because they were selling/implementing policies with repercussions for everyone but themselves.

Which brings us to Helen MacNamara. MacNamara is not unsullied; she was fined for bringing a karaoke machine into a drinks party, an offence exacerbated by the fact she was Director General for Propriety and Ethics before becoming Deputy Cabinet Secretary.

No doubt she too is eager to minimise her own culpability. But you only have to read the self-deprecating intro to the message she sent to the then NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens – “just when you thought you were out of the woods on annoying emails from me” – to understand she was not part of the macho culture, and how hard it must have been to function within it.

MacNamara’s evidence was at least constructive in that she apologised for her own role, admitted social distancing was never adhered to and underlined the way in which a lack of class, ethnic and gender diversity, combined with Matt Hancock’s “nuclear levels of over-confidence”, affected policy-making.

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Her “annoying” email went on to point out, quite rightly, that most PPE was designed for male bodies despite 77% of NHS staff being female. But, more importantly, she told the inquiry how a bunch of powerful, privileged men – detached from the lives of those who voted them in – were unable to conceive how specific restrictions might affect specific groups: those with mental health problems, for example; victims of domestic abuse; single parents; pregnant women.

These were the kind of men who could write: “Who do we not save?” on a whiteboard, as if they were playing some kind of parlour game, but lacked the real-world nous to understand the potential impact of home schooling for those in receipt of free school lunches.

North of the Border, politicians have been playing another parlour game called Who Deleted Their Covid WhatsApp Messages? Humza Yousaf said he kept all his although the Scottish Government has a policy to “routinely delete” them.

The Sunday Mail had accused him, Nicola Sturgeon and Clinical Director Jason Leitch of deliberate deletion. Sturgeon said she didn’t manage Covid by WhatsApp, but refused to say what she had or hadn’t deleted. Douglas Ross told her to stop “stonewalling.”

Last week, Jamie Dawson KC, counsel to the UK inquiry, said no messages from within the Scottish Government had been provided, though Yousaf insists 14,000 are on their way now legal notice has been given. He insists his government is committed to transparency. The problem it is all very reminiscent of the prevarication and heel-dragging that accompanied the Holyrood inquiry into the handling of the sexual harassment allegations against Alex Salmond. And, if they couldn’t learn from that, who’s to say they’ll learn from this.

Furthermore, the SNP’s lack of clarity and, in particular, Sturgeon’s evasiveness, do not augur well for the political dimension of the Scottish inquiry.

For these exercises to be worth anything, those responsible for decision-making must approach them in a spirit of openness and accountability, and without bias.

Writing in The Spectator last week, clinical epidemiologist and UK inquiry witness Carl Heneghan suggested its default position was that the government should have locked down sooner, harder and longer; and that it was “evolving into an attack on those who questioned the official policies of lockdown, mask-wearing and so on”. Heneghan is a lockdown sceptic, as is, broadly speaking, The Spectator.

I am not. But I recognise the importance of the issue MacNamara raised: that too much energy was spent fixating over statistics and charts, and not enough on considering how real lives function. And so nursing homes were locked down without thought for the confusion of those left inside. And victims of domestic violence were placed at increased risk. And people who did not have the virus were told not to trouble the NHS, leading to other deaths not registered on the daily Covid tally.

There is, presumably, no-one who believes the UK was well-prepared for a pandemic, or that its response to the crisis was adequate. The country will be dealing with the mental and physical legacy of misplaced decision-making for many years.

So, a plea to politicians, Spads and civil servants: stop politicking; leave your egos at the door; show some humility. Put all the information you have out there for scrutiny and apply yourself to learning from it. In the longer term, make sure the rooms in which those decisions are taken are more representative of society at large. Give yourselves and those you serve a fighting chance that next time – if there is a next time – an effective, coherent, balanced and compassionate strategy will already be in place. And that this strategy will mean fewer deaths, less trauma, and no need for further public inquiries.