The long-awaited COVID inquiry will hold its first public hearings today with an opening statement from chair Baroness Hallett and a film of testimonies from bereaved families that's been described as "difficult to watch".

Baroness Hallett, a retired judge, has promised to put the 226,000 victims of the pandemic at the heart of the investigation into the government's response.

 

However, she has been criticised by some families for not giving more time to hear their stories - with a demonstration planned outside the London hearing.

Only one bereaved family member is due to give evidence during the opening module examining the country's resilience and preparedness.

Baroness Hallett has said that more bereaved families will be heard during later modules.

"Mistakes were made, lessons have been learned, and changes have been mad to ensure this can never happen again, but we should not assign blame to any individual."

 

Since that is almost bound to be the eventual conclusion, more or less, of this vast bureaucratic exercise, it would be better to save millions of pounds and just forget the whole thing.

 

Except, of course, the politicians want to say "Look, we held an inquiry!", to which the best response is "Who paid for it?"

 

We already know that the sorry collection of placemen and party hacks who have crawled into Westminster aren't fit for anything more challenging than sweeping the streets. Why spend millions more to confirm that?