COVID-19 Inquiry Set to Become Most Expensive in UK History

A member of the public walks past the venue to the UK COVID-19 Inquiry in London on June 20, 2023. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

The COVID-19 Inquiry is set to become the most expensive in British history and is currently costing taxpayers at least £135,907 a day, according to analysis released on May 16.

Over the last financial year, the inquiry has spent over £70 million on the investigation into the COVID-19 pandemic which began in June 2022.

To date, this means over £94 million has been spent since the investigation began less than two years ago.

According to the TaxPayers’ Alliance campaign group, the estimated cost of the COVID-19 Inquiry, which is due to conclude at the end of 2026, will be £196 million, making it the most expensive inquiry since the Inquiries Act was introduced in 2005.

Costs are set to surpass the ongoing Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which will have run approximately double the length of time.

The current COVID-19 Inquiry is also projected to be more expensive than the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, which cost £191 million with a run length of 12 years, and nearly 10 times more expensive than the Leveson Phone Hacking Inquiry, which ended in 2012.

In addition to the inquiry spending, taxpayers will also have to pay the wages of 265 civil servants who have worked full-time to provide the inquiry with documents and briefing of witnesses to the UK’s COVID-19 response.

Whitehall’s extra staffing costs are estimated to be £100,000 per day, totalling £44 million when combined with the additional legal advice costs received for the inquiry.

Furthermore, Scotland has already spent £21 million on its separate inquiry.

‘Expensive Political Pantomime’

John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said in statement to The Epoch Times: “While it is crucial that lessons are learned from the pandemic, there’s little sign at the moment that we will be left with anything but a huge bill. The COVID Inquiry should be short, sharp, and decisive, not an expensive political pantomime.”

However, inquiry Chair Baroness Hallett believes that the public deserves a thorough and comprehensive examination of the government’s planning and response.

A spokesperson for the UK COVID-19 Inquiry said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times: “It was the government’s decision to set up this public inquiry with very broad Terms of Reference to examine the country’s preparedness and response to the COVID-19 pandemic and to learn lessons for the future.

“The inquiry’s scope is exceptionally wide and touches on the work of many government departments in all four nations of the UK. It is obliged to gather evidence from many organisations, especially those at the centre of responding to the pandemic,” the spokesperson said.

UK COVID-19 Inquiry chair, Baroness Hallett, leaves the inquiry in London on Dec. 7, 2023. Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images

Four years after lockdowns began in the UK, some campaigners are unsatisfied with the current framework of the COVID-19 Inquiry. Earlier this year, a group of 55 prominent academics and scientists wrote an open letter to Baroness Hallett, expressing concern that the investigation has a predetermined outcome and fails to account for the true costs of lockdowns in the UK.

The group, coordinated by Professor Sunetra Gupta, an epidemiologist at Oxford University, outlined that the inquiry “gives the impression of being fundamentally biased” towards those left bereaved by COVID-19. The letter also claims that the current inquiry was originated by those who had lost loved ones, and that “there has been little opportunity for petitions to be brought by those who have suffered from the negative effects of pandemic policy decisions.”

In another open letter to Baroness Hallett, published last month, health care groups and charities accused the chair of backtracking over the probe’s examination of how lockdowns affected access to mental health services.

Mind, Rethink Mental Health, and other organisations warned that the inquiry “risks failing” millions of people who were turned away from services if Baroness Hallett does not devote more time to examining the wider mental health impact of lockdowns.