Revealed: Sunak snubbed request to appoint more diverse Covid inquiry panel

The Cabinet Office refused to appoint a second chair to the Covid inquiry to ensure better representation of minority groups, saying it would “lengthen the process” and “delay reports”.

The inquiry, which has just concluded its first stage of evidence giving, is overseen by a single chair, crossbench peer Heather Hallett, who is white.

A letter from the Federation of Ethnic Minority Healthcare Organisations (FEMHO), Southall Black Sisters and other core participants had urged prime minister Rishi Sunak to appoint a panel of chairs to help in “understanding and investigating the specific issues faced by Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities”.

But they were told appointing a more diverse panel would simply “lengthen the process and delay the production of the report”.

In a letter seen by openDemocracy, Darren Tierney, the director general of the Propriety and Constitution Group (PCG) at the Cabinet Office, told the groups: “The larger the panel, the more difficult it is to schedule the hearings and process the evidence,” he said.

Tierney, writing on behalf of the prime minister, assured recipients their concerns were being “addressed” and that Hallett was “determined [that] the investigation into the unequal impacts of the pandemic will be at the forefront of every module”.

No core groups specifically representing the concerns of people of colour were included as core participants in the first module, which was focused on how prepared the UK was for the pandemic.

Lobby Akinnola, a member of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, whose father Femi died during the pandemic, told openDemocracy that lack of representation at the most senior level of the inquiry was still a concern.

“Often the people best placed to identify when the system is broken are those who are suffering the consequences,” he said. “I think having a diverse panel makes it much easier to point out where the system is failing and when the system is hurting people because we have experienced and seen it ourselves.”

Akinnola said the inquiry might have dealt with certain aspects of the first module differently had a diverse panel of chairs been appointed.

“There would have been more of a push for understanding how austerity affected people of colour,” he said. “Having that voice to ask these questions ensures that, should we find ourselves in a future pandemic, we make the recommendations to prevent the disproportionate death that we saw in Covid.”

Throughout the pandemic, Black and Brown people were disproportionately affected by coronavirus: they were more likely to be working in frontline jobs and living in cramped conditions, with higher levels of deprivation and worse health.

A spokesperson from FEMHO told openDemocracy the response from the Cabinet Office was “disappointing”.

“The promise of a comprehensive inquiry demands not only an analysis of the virus's impact but also a rigorous examination of the social structures that allowed it to disproportionately harm ethnic minorities,” they said. “To disregard ethnic minority perspectives is to perpetuate the same systemic injustices that we should be striving to rectify.

“It's disappointing that while the inquiry team calls for diversity and the amplification of marginalised voices, the Cabinet Office has fallen short in taking meaningful steps to support and empower these very voices by including a second panel of chairs.”

In February, the Covid inquiry was criticised for not including a module specifically dedicated to exploring how structural racism led to the disproportionate deaths of people of colour in the pandemic. During its first module, it was revealed that not a single emergency planning document in the UK dealt with structural racism, while few referred to structural inequalities at all.

Sunak’s decision not to appoint a panel – restated in Tierney’s letter following a statement made in Parliament – was at odds with a pledge made by former prime minister Boris Johnson in 2021. Johnson said a panel of chairs would be appointed “to make sure the inquiry has access to the full range of expertise needed to complete its important work”.

A Cabinet Office spokesperson told openDemocracy that “the inquiry is thorough, rigorous and comprehensive,” but that it was in the public interest that it “delivers its report without excessive delay”.

“The inquiry will have access to a range of expertise and will be gathering views from the public throughout.”

A spokesperson for the Covid-19 inquiry said it was “the prime minister’s decision whether to appoint a panel to support Baroness Hallett in her role as chair of the inquiry”.

They added: “All of the inquiry’s investigations will consider the unequal impact of the pandemic. For the inquiry’s first investigation, into the UK’s pandemic preparedness and resilience, the inquiry has already heard from two world leading inequalities experts, Professor Sir Michael Marmot and Professor Clare Bambra.

“Six structural inequalities experts have also been instructed, following the chair's ruling in March 2023 that the inquiry should obtain expert evidence regarding pre-pandemic structural racism and pre-existing structural discrimination on other grounds. Their reports will be entered into evidence and published.”