Just reading the important @CommonsHealth report - lots of interest in there, but one thing hit me immediately... they write "covid-19"
In my writing/pleadings I have shifted from "COVID-19" to "Covid-19", even sometimes "Covid"... but this seems new
Cheeky Rawls reference
This is a profoundly important paragraph - and I wonder if the public inquiry will reach the same conclusion: that the only ways to restrict spread were isolation for the infectious and enforced restrictions on social contacts (i.e. lockdown and sub-lockdown measures)
The simple conclusion of this report is that lockdown was the logical policy and should have happened far earlier.
The report basically says that not just the govt but the advisors around the government led to a policy of "fatalism" which was a "serious error"
"Listen, if there's one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free–it expands to new territories and it crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously...I'm simply saying that life, uh, finds a way."
14 March - no plan for lockdown (it began 9 days later)
9 March - Hancock was told we could be heading for 820,000 deaths
This is quite a paragraph
This is a very difficult paragraph - is it realistic, except in hindsight, to say the government could have gone against the scientific advice it was receiving, or that the public would have accepted that?
Weren't we all?
But this makes the point I made in my previous tweet. Unrealistic for ministers to go against the scientific advice
Hancock makes the same point
Also, he was inexperienced as a health secretary. Bad luck and timing
This seems fair, but vague
Scientists should not just be in the civil service - how about in the cabinet?!
Also, I know sounds biased, but lawyers also have forensic analysis skills and (at least in my field) challenging scientific evidence.
What skills did the cabinet have?
Again, this is analysis through the retrospectoscope - how could anyone have known, or predicted, how the British public would have responded to lockdowns/contact tracing?
To be fair they make the point - still a criticism though: it was fair for you to be wrong but you were still wrong
The simple point made about the tiered system of local lockdowns in summer 2020 is that without effective test and trace (which "failed") it couldn't work
"decisions felt arbitrary and untransparent"
Alpha variant was more transmissible so earlier lockdown in Sep 2020 would have helped but again failure of test and trace was key
Back into it now...
This is surely right - but difficult if you are looking for accountability. It goes back to the Ian Malcolm (Jurassic Par) quote I cheekily used earlier. Nature can't always be controlled as much as we want to believe it can be, but that means there isn't always someone to blame
The importance of clear public messaging - obvious at the time, obvious now
Again, we knew this at the time.
Matt Hancock isn't mentioned here for some reason - he should be
"14% of respondents “believe the real purpose of a mass vaccination programme against coronavirus is simply to track and control the population” - Nov 2020
😬
My guess is a lot of this will happen in the next crisis, if it comes in next couple of decades, because we have experienced a pandemic and politicians will be more comfortable challenging scientists.
Which is one explanation why countries which experienced SARS did "better"
Test and trace was a "drag anchor" on the UK's response to the pandemic
Lawyers will be pricking their ears at this paragraph
(nb just because a parliamentary committee uses the word "negligent" doesn't mean it meets the legal standard, but it's still an interesting word for them to use)
The Committees here struggling to find strong enough words short of swearing
If there is going to be a successful legal claim against the government for causing deaths then it is likely to focus on the first few months in hospitals and discharge back to care homes
Here is a sub-heading which is dripping in disdain
Incidentally, when I acted for the Department of Health in the Mid Staffs Inquiry it was noticeable how much the NHS and DoH used expressions like "world class"
🤔
"extraordinarily"
Test and Trace absolutely pilloried in this report - more so than any other element of the response
"bitter irony"
I know others have more expertise on this than I but another clear conclusion of this report is that "protect the NHS" also meant "abandon social care"
Again, this is getting close to legal liability for deaths in care homes - if not reaching it. I guess we will find out in years to come
This is going to have to be very carefully considered by the public inquiry which will have access to emails, messaging etc.
Perfect storm of failings for social care
Maybe no legal liability - but who knows
"The impact of covid-19 has been uneven across the population, with some sections of society suffering significantly higher illness and deaths than the nation as a whole"
Very complimentary about the UK vaccination programme
TLDR: got everything else wrong but vaccinations great
The Divisional Court has ruled that the Government acted unlawfully and irrationally when deciding not to implement the full funding recommendation in Lord Bellamy’s Criminal Legal Aid Review.
I had the rare honour of acting for my professional colleagues, Criminal Law Solicitors Association (@CrimeSolicitors) and the London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association (@lccsa), the Interested Parties in the case. Their press release is below.
The Claimant @TheLawSociety was superbly represented by Tom de la Mare KC @thebrieftweet, Gayatri Sarathy and Emmeline Plews of @BlackstoneChbrs, instructed by John Halford of Bindmans LLP Gayatri Sarathy and Emmeline Plews of Blackstone Chambers, instructed by John Halford of @BindmansLLP.
The amount of work which went into putting the case together and presenting the oral arguments, and standing up for the rule of law, was extraordinary - a credit to the profession.
Together with the Law Society, the CLSA and the LCCSA provided the Court with a large number of witness statements from solicitors up and down the country, at every level of seniority, describing the relentless, physically demanding and emotionally draining nature of criminal defence work and the chronic underfunding which has led to a crisis in the retention of solicitors who are leaving in their droves for better pay and conditions that can be found elsewhere.
The Government response to the Criminal Legal Aid Review utterly failed to grasp the extent of the crisis. Despite the review recommending a 15% increase to solicitors fees as “no more than a minimum starting point”, it increased fees by only 9% with a further 2% promised this year.
The ruling today confirms that the Government response to the review was so flawed as to be unlawful and irrational.
In today’s ruling Lord Justice Singh and Mr Justice Jay described the evidence we submitted from our members alongside the Law Society as “a mass of convergent evidence from honest, professional people working up and down the country”, which is “cogent”, “impressive” and “compelling”, and which “brings home [that] women and men working up and down the country at all hours of the day and night, in difficult and stressful circumstances, carrying out an essential service which depends to a large extent on their goodwill and sense of public duty”.
Some very public-facing comments by Lord Reed in the opening of his summary of the judgment:
- Policy is not that the UK will process asylum claims whilst people are in Rwanda, Rwanda will process them (despite the former often being claimed)
- The non-refoulement principle is contained in a number of treaties not just the European Convention on Human Rights and Human Rights Act
Prediction is a mug's game but if I were giving a public judgment rejecting the government's appeal this is how I would begin it!
This is a beautifully clear summary of the relevant legal principles. A model of its form - plain English, focussed on the public
The Home Secretary acted unlawfully by accommodating, since December 2021, thousands of unaccompanied child asylum seekers in hotels. Kent Council also acted unlawfully in passing on responsibility for them.
A judgment suffused with humanity, legal rigour and common sense from Mr Justice Chamberlain, starting from changing the parties' preferred acronym to emphasise the human element.
The House of Commons Privileges Committee has reported on the conduct of MPs who impugned 'the integrity of that Committee and its members' and attempted 'to lobby or intimidate those members or to encourage others to do so'
This is the suggestion of contempt based on Erskine May (the Parliamentary procedure bible) - which I think is quite convincing. The comments of members about the Privileges Committee being essentially corrupted were very arguably over the line
One point which I think was striking about the MPs who criticised the report is none of them seemed to point to any particular finding they disagreed with. They just went for the committee and the individuals on it.