The Covid Inquiry has come under fire for not mentioning child or children in its terms of reference. The chairwoman of the Commission on Young Lives and former Children’s Commissioner for England, described it as a “shocking oversight.”
Speaking to The Telegraph newspaper, Anne Longfield said:
“It does completely feel that the people who were at the forefront of both making the sacrifices but also suffering because of the pandemic have just been airbrushed out of memory with it.”
The parents campaign group UsForThem is calling for a separate children’s inquiry. The group’s co-founder, Molly Kingsley said:
“There’s no group that has been more disproportionately burdened than children and the impact of the pandemic response will live with children for the rest of their lives, so it’s absolutely critical that they are included in the inquiry.”
She went on to say that the impact of the covid measures are “so severe and so indiscriminate” on children.
According to The Telegraph:
The Telegraph has been running a campaign calling on ministers to put children first as the country recovers from its Covid lockdowns.
The terms of reference, which are being consulted on until early April, state that: “The inquiry will examine, consider and report on preparations and the response to the pandemic in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.”
It adds that the inquiry will examine the consequences of 16 topics, ranging from “preparedness and resilience” to “prisons and other places of detention” – and including “restrictions on attendance at places of education”.
It comes after a group of MPs, led by the chairman of the Commons Education Select Committee, Robert Halfon, called for the closure of schools to form a “significant part” of the Covid inquiry.
In a letter sent to the inquiry’s chair, Baroness Heather Hallett, the MPs also asked for the impact of the pandemic on young people’s mental health and on their “life chances” to be considered.
It is my opinion that the inquiry will be a whitewash and that there will be no real scrutiny of the decision to lockdown the country in March 2020. They intend to lock down the country in the future, not just to deal with viral epidemics, but to tackle climate change too.
I hope to be proved wrong, but I doubt I will be.
