A lawyer representing the government’s former chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, has said the release of his complete diary entries to the UK COVID-19 Inquiry would be a breach of his human rights.
The inquiry has already heard selected excerpts from the diary he wrote while advising the government during the 2020/2021 pandemic.
In one excerpt Sir Patrick wrote: “Number 10 chaos as usual. On Friday, the two-metre rule meeting made it abundantly clear that no-one in Number 10 or the Cabinet Office had really read or taken time to understand the science advice on two metres. Quite extraordinary.”
But eight media organisations have joined forces and called on the inquiry’s chair, Baroness Heather Hallett, to allow full diary pages to be published in order to see them in context.
Diary ‘Never Intended for Publication’
Describing it as, “a brain dump,” Mr. Hill said the notes were, “never intended for publication” and would have remained private, if they had not been requested by the inquiry.In another excerpt Sir Patrick said he felt he, the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, and the Sage committee were, “being used as human shields” by ministers.
Referring apparently to then Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s inconsistent behaviour, Sir Patrick wrote: “As another person said, it’s so inconsistent, it’s like bipolar decision-making.”
Mr. Hill told the inquiry on Monday: “They represent a snapshot of how he felt in the moment of writing them. He did not amend them if he changed his mind later, he made no attempts to correct them as and when he learnt new information.”
He said they were Sir Patrick’s way of, “creating some space for myself in what could have been an overwhelming situation.”
Mr. Hill said Sir Patrick had a right to private and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights and he said release of the full diary would be in breach of that right.
He suggested the, “relevant extracts” could be released to the media in a separate document.
Media Lawyer Says Diary ‘Clearly Relevant’
He said, “They have been disclosed to the inquiry, judged to be ‘clearly relevant’, provided to all core participants, and repeatedly referenced in open hearings.”Mr. Bunting said any “sensitive” part of the notes had already been redacted.
Baroness Hallett said she would give a final decision on Mr. Bunting’s application later this week.
On Tuesday, the inquiry heard from Professor Steven Riley, who said the first wave of the pandemic could have been less damaging if Britain had gone into lockdown two weeks earlier.
Prof. Riley, who was working at Imperial College London at the time, said the lockdown should have started on Mar. 9, 2020 rather than Mar. 23, 2020.
In his witness statement to the inquiry he said, “My view is that the first national period of stringent social distancing should have been introduced on or around Mar. 9, 2020.”
Asked to elaborate, he said: “Once we had lab confirmed deaths in ICUs (intensive care units) with no travel history, no obvious connections to any out of country social networks, even a handful of those would indicate that we would be rapidly progressing in our epidemic.”
Prof. Riley, who now works for the UK Health Security Agency, said people starting changing their behaviour in response to news of the spread of COVID-19 on Mar. 16, 2020.
“Had we achieved that rapid reduction in mixing earlier than the 16th then the peak height would have been lower, and the area under the curve for the first wave would have been less, and potentially quite a bit less,” he added.
