Covid-19 Inquiry

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

The Vaccine Taskforce clearly contributed a huge amount, and we should be really proud of the innovation within the UK on this, including the development of some of the first vaccines. This is one of the points for future modules; the hearings on vaccines and therapeutics are currently taking place, so I do not want to stray too much into that. There is a point at which things need to shift from being emergency response to business as usual, but I note the noble Baroness’s concerns and will feed them back to relevant Ministers as part of their consideration.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

Does the Minister think that the inquiry will look closely at the question of collateral damage from the way that the whole Covid epidemic was dealt with? Let us face it: the economy was absolutely ruined by the flood of money that was put into it; the education of young children was gratuitously ignored, and the damages are still being felt today; and many people in the health system who were suffering from other complaints such as cancer, strokes and heart attacks have suffered dreadfully as a result of it. Are they going to deal with the collateral damage of the Covid epidemic? I think that this was much worse than dealing with the disease itself.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes a point on collateral damage and the impact of the pandemic. I think a lot of us will recognise that, particularly the impact on children and young people, from those we have in our families and social context. The length of the inquiry was noted by the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, and one of the reasons for its length is that it will go into quite a lot of detail to look at the impact on particular aspects of society beyond the initial response, the preparedness and the impact on individuals from the disease itself. The hearings on the impact on children and young people are due to take place in September later this year. Then, the hearings on module 9, which is the module after that one, are due to take place in November 2025. The wider impact on society is in module 10, towards the end of the consideration of the impact of Covid by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hallett, and those hearings are currently expected to take place early next year.