Post by northwestman on May 27, 2023 11:34:19 GMT 1
It’s David Cameron’s government that will dominate the headlines when the Covid Inquiry starts its work in earnest next month.
That’s because its first phase, known as Module One, will focus on the “resilience, planning and preparedness” of the UK in the decade before the pandemic hit.
And it won’t just be Cameron and former Health Secretary (now Chancellor) Jeremy Hunt who will feature. I understand that George Osborne is on the witness list too, having been served a so-called Rule 9 letter requesting evidence.
In assessing the impact of the Coalition government’s spending squeeze on areas such as NHS and social care staffing levels, hospital bed numbers, health inequalities, workplace safety and sick pay, the Conservative party’s economic policies since 2010 will be placed in the dock as much as its health policies.
As a result, although Lady Hallett will be scrupulously impartial, her inquiry will effectively put austerity on trial. Unlike any other public inquiry in living memory, this one matters because Covid affected us all. Its verdicts (and there will be interim reports every few months) will give an assessment of the state of the British state and how it was tested to breaking point.
There’s no doubt that Osborne and Cameron will make a staunch defence of what they saw as the need to restore the state of the public finances that they inherited from Labour after the 2008 financial crash.
Yet there are sure to be uncomfortable questions about the way spending was tightened for the NHS (plunging from an average of six per cent under Labour to just over one per cent under the Tories in 2015), with all that entailed for staffing levels, hospital building capacity and even stocks of PPE.
inews.co.uk/opinion/covid-inquiry-put-tory-austerity-on-trial-2368318
That’s because its first phase, known as Module One, will focus on the “resilience, planning and preparedness” of the UK in the decade before the pandemic hit.
And it won’t just be Cameron and former Health Secretary (now Chancellor) Jeremy Hunt who will feature. I understand that George Osborne is on the witness list too, having been served a so-called Rule 9 letter requesting evidence.
In assessing the impact of the Coalition government’s spending squeeze on areas such as NHS and social care staffing levels, hospital bed numbers, health inequalities, workplace safety and sick pay, the Conservative party’s economic policies since 2010 will be placed in the dock as much as its health policies.
As a result, although Lady Hallett will be scrupulously impartial, her inquiry will effectively put austerity on trial. Unlike any other public inquiry in living memory, this one matters because Covid affected us all. Its verdicts (and there will be interim reports every few months) will give an assessment of the state of the British state and how it was tested to breaking point.
There’s no doubt that Osborne and Cameron will make a staunch defence of what they saw as the need to restore the state of the public finances that they inherited from Labour after the 2008 financial crash.
Yet there are sure to be uncomfortable questions about the way spending was tightened for the NHS (plunging from an average of six per cent under Labour to just over one per cent under the Tories in 2015), with all that entailed for staffing levels, hospital building capacity and even stocks of PPE.
inews.co.uk/opinion/covid-inquiry-put-tory-austerity-on-trial-2368318
