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The Law Society Gazette: Coronavirus - Let’s learn lessons from previous public inquiries

Des Collins, Senior Partner at Collins Solicitors has written an article in the Law Society’s Gazette, published today, titled: “Coronavirus – Let’s learn lessons from previous public inquiries”

He writes that “There are increasing calls from all over the UK for an inquiry into how the UK government has handled the response to coronavirus. It won’t be long before those demands become increasingly insistent.

Much debate will centre around timing: did the government act too slowly when it could see the virus coming our way, and was it in any way as prepared as it should have been?”

He goes on to argue that the timing for starting the discussion about the Terms of Reference, which need to be considered very carefully indeed, is now and that there are “significant parallels that can be drawn from inquiries into contaminated blood scandal and the coronavirus pandemic: in both the remit is/would be to examine the reaction of the government and the department of health to an unforeseen crisis.”

Any major, new inquiry can learn from the Infected Blood Inquiry, at which Collins represents over 1,400 people.

He concludes by saying that “whenever there is a crisis we always hear the same mantra ‘we must learn from our mistakes’. In relation to an Inquiry into the UK response to this pandemic, he adds, “we have an opportunity to do just that.”

The article can be read in full here