13th June 2023

The Covid Inquiry started taking oral evidence from witnesses today, and there is one snippet of news which you may have missed – and that may make all the difference.

Here it is on the Guardian live blog:

*

Of the recent(ish) inquiries with which I am most familiar – the Hutton Inquiry, the Chilcot Inquiry, the Leveson Inquiry, and the Daniel Morgan Inquiry – there has been (if I recall correctly) a common problem.

Yes, there was great apprehension and even excitement on the eve of publication – often after years of suspense.

And then: the report drops.

Volumes and volumes of text, often with schedules of evidence, are all plonked into the public domain.

Time-poor reporters (and their attention-poor readers) scramble to get a sense of the report – often relying on executive summaries.

There are word-searches and there is scan-reading, and there is a hurried hunt for juicy quotes and any smoky gun.

If we are lucky, we may also get a meaningful ministerial statement.

And then: it is all over in a day, leaving the report to specialists and eccentrics.

In a few days, the report will pass into history, and it can be quickly forgotten.

The report may have taken considerable time and resources to put together, but the all-or-nothing manner of its publication can in turn mean that there will not be any similar effort into the media and the public engaging with the report when it is published.

This is why it is sensible – and welcome and refreshing – that the Covid inquiry are not saving everything to one big report at the end of the process.

As well as public, streamed sessions, and an admirable website hosting useful documents, the Inquiry can encourage ongoing engagement by issuing these interim reports.

And, if this is done well, then we may end up up with that rare thing: an Inquiry where the findings and recommendations last longer than a news cycle.

***

Comments Policy

This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.

Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome, or if they risk derailing the discussion.

More on the comments policy is here.