By Justin Madders

MP for Ellesmere Port

FEW of my constituents will question the absolute need for a public inquiry into the Covid-19 pandemic.

The very purpose of this inquiry is to ensure that we, as a nation, are suitably prepared if – and let us hope the situation ever arises– another pandemic ever comes our way.

However, many of my constituents will have been absolutely horrified to learn from witnesses to the inquiry, chaired by Baroness Heather Hallett, just how badly prepared we were and how badly many of the leading lights in government were at doing their jobs.

My thoughts are centred on residents of Ellesmere Port and Neston and beyond who lost loved ones during the pandemic and who were required by Government rules to stay away from others which meant many people faced significant events alone. The last thing they will want to do is to relive the horrors experienced in the times since March 2020 when the pandemic first began – but relive those dreadful experiences we must for the sake of our futures. All those months when many people were stuck at home unable to go to work and constrained in the amount of time they were allowed to spend, if any time at all, with family, friends and loved ones in general. All those months when my office in Ellesmere Port had to be kept closed to many aspects of constituency business but was used instead for distribution of food parcels to the many people in acute local need.

During this time I also served as a Shadow Minister of Health on behalf of the official Opposition in Parliament and so was perhaps following the detail of the Government’s response to the pandemic more closely than many. However, even from that standpoint I had little idea about all the shenanigans taking place within 10 Downing Street where a hapless Boris Johnson was running the show, according to witnesses to the London inquiry, very badly.

Evidence to the inquiry – from his cabinet secretary, his principal private secretary, his most senior aide, his director of communications and his chief scientific adviser – all stated that the then Prime Minister was not up to the task of dealing with the issues involved in trying to curb the spread of a truly devastating disease, even though he had recovered from Covid-19 himself after a very worrying spell in hospital.

People keeping up-to-date with the inquiry will possibly conclude that the main protagonists were fighting each other like rats in a sack, rather than coming together to combat a rampant killer disease.

Remember in the early days of the pandemic it was suggested that we might lose about 20,000 citizens to Covid-19 if we were fortunate. Well the actual UK figure is well over 230,000.

However Boris Johnson, the inquiry was told, decided it was more important at one stage to take two weeks off to concentrate on writing a book about Shakespeare.

And let’s not forget his belief that Covid was “just nature’s way of dealing with old people” who “will die anyway soon” and they should “accept their fate”.

He is not due to give evidence for several weeks yet but I hope he is challenged very robustly on those comments which sum up his total unsuitability for high office.