Can an inquiry be devastating if nobody is paying any attention?

HAVE you been following the Covid inquiry? Away from the front pages, which have mostly been occupied by other stories, revelation after appalling revelation has been spilling out, confirming our very worst fears about what went on in Downing Street as the Covid pandemic hit.

- Martha Gill

The building was the scene, really, of two Covid scandals. There was party gate — the splashy scandal, a colourful display of hypocrisy — and then there was the other, unnamed scandal, a depressing display of incompetence, less eye-catching but much worse because it actually cost lives.

We know Britain’s death rates took a greater leap upwards than those of peer countries — France, Spain or Germany. But within Dorland House, under the questioning of former high court judge Baroness Hallett, we now are beginning to understand exactly why.

Here’s the picture that is emerging: a toxic, chaotic environment, in which the prime minister’s most senior advisers had completely lost confidence in his decision-making. Both he and the health secretary were — privately at least — held in contempt by many of those around them. Meanwhile, as the killer virus spread, there was factional infighting, cherry-picking of scientific advice to fit political narratives, and a failure to properly read or understand the latest evidence. Scientists were kept in the dark while vital information was lost in the general confusion.