The government debacle burial process

Elliot Keck has a useful CAPX reminder of the government debacle burial process.


The Covid Inquiry has become an expensive farce

• The Covid Inquiry is likely to have spent around £230m by next summer, a daily spend of about £160,000
• An almost unlimited remit was built into the Covid Inquiry from the start
• By the time we get to the Covid Inquiry's final report, the pandemic will be a distant memory

‘Flawed analysis’, they called it. For years, we at the TaxPayers’ Alliance have been forecasting the ultimate cost of the Covid Inquiry. And on pretty much every occasion, the inquiry has completely dismissed our warnings, saying it was based on ‘hypothetical future expenditure and an imaginary end date’.


The whole piece is well worth reading - this item of blatant bloating for example.


One of the biggest items of spending – almost £15m or nearly 10% of the total cost – has been ‘Every Story Matters’, described as the largest public engagement exercise ever undertaken by a UK public inquiry. It has led to 58,000 stories being shared with the inquiry. Which undoubtedly meant a lot to those telling them. But it’s difficult to see what value this has when it comes to answering the question: was the government’s approach to the pandemic the right one?