The Hallet Inquiry - jumping to conclusions

Kick-off assumptions show that the Inquiry may already have bought the Government story.

One of us has been called to give evidence to the Hallet Inquiry. So Carl worked for weeks on his submission, assuming that the Inquiry would genuinely look at events of the last three years and the evidence decisions were made on. Chaired by a British judge who seemed to stand no nonsense from politicians, a widely respected member of the Upper House, what could go wrong?

Inquire watchers will know that usually what happens is that the process looks impartial and, in some cases, probably is impartial, then you get a report which is either in the wishy-washy sphere or is ignored by the government and public health like Dame Deairdre Hines’ report on the 2009 influenza pandemic was.

The government took no notice of Dame Deirdre’s Warning about overreliance on predictive models, and here we are again. However, once the cards are on the table, we need not worry too much about who says what in the Hallet Inquiry, who is called, who is ignored, and whatever its findings are.

Why? Because the …