{"id":459396,"date":"2026-03-05T19:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T19:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/459396\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T19:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T19:32:08","slug":"covid-inquiry-chair-defends-cost-and-length-of-process-on-final-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/459396\/","title":{"rendered":"Covid inquiry chair defends cost and length of process on final day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In a statement at the end of the proceedings on Thursday, Baroness Hallett said: &#8220;There are people who believe it is time to move on from the pandemic and they question the worth of this inquiry. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I hope that when they read about the extent of the suffering that we&#8217;ve heard and see the results of the inquiry&#8217;s work, they will appreciate the huge scale of loss caused by Covid 19 and they will understand better why this inquiry was established.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Baroness Hallett said over 600,000 documents had been received and reviewed as part of the inquiry, and more than 350 witnesses had been called to give evidence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She also said the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-61970053\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">terms of reference given to her by Boris Johnson<\/a> when he was prime minister were the &#8220;broadest of any public inquiry to date&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">And she urged the public to push for changes she recommended ahead of any future pandemic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;If implemented, my recommendations should reduce the number of deaths, reduce the suffering and reduce the social and economic cost,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a statement at the end of the proceedings on Thursday, Baroness Hallett said: &#8220;There are people who&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-459396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}