That is why it is so important that we have full transparency today. ![]() The consequences for many could hardly have been more devastating. There were few parliamentary votes in the crucial weeks when the nation’s fate was decided, and even after normal voting resumed, there was all too often a dismal consensus between parties to resume or prolong restrictions. Nevertheless, when those edicts were harsher than in living memory, such scrutiny was needed as never before. Perhaps MPs’ most important task is to weigh, debate and challenge the edicts of government. In our democracy it is the primary duty of Parliament to scrutinise the decisions of the executive. Yet it appears that during the pandemic those decisions were made by a few senior ministers and civil servants who were both relying on and perpetuating a flow of information that confirmed rather than challenged their thinking. The whole population, meanwhile, continues to suffer from the vast and lasting damage inflicted by lockdowns upon our national finances.Ĭovid-era decisions – affecting the health, wealth and education of so many millions – could hardly have been more monumental. They, like so many on NHS waiting lists, are the victims of hospital treatments cancelled en masse. But it is already clear that young people endured school closures which wrecked their education and will continue to wreck their prospects, while some may have died from diseases which could have been treated had they been picked up earlier. ![]() The cost of such monomania will only become fully apparent in the years to come. Logically, an AI company which has received contracts worth more than £1.2m, produced regular reports on Covid for the Counter-Disinformation Unit – a secretive group within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. That shadowy campaign to shape the flow of information could possibly have been bolstered by the deployment of artificial intelligence tools capable of monitoring online posts then flagging those the government may deem to be “disinformation”. Social media companies, so frequently lambasted in the past for creating a communications “free-for-all” which might undermine democratic processes, in fact operated closely with government departments, offering them special “trusted flagger” status so that Whitehall requests for content to be removed were fast-tracked. Far from welcoming the spectrum of views which is the hallmark of democracy, it succumbed to the temptation to deploy technological tools to limit scepticism. Worse, the parliamentary scrutiny that could have corrected overreach was scandalously absent.Īs we report, rather than focusing entirely on seeking out every possible expert opinion, the government seemed eager to curtail debate around controversial lockdown policies. Unforgivably, the more we learn about decisions made at the time, the less that seems to be the case. ![]() But because of that, it was at least natural to assume that those who confined us would seek to restore our freedom as soon as humanly possible. Lockdown was a withdrawal of liberties for which these Isles have struggled over hundreds of years. ![]() When Boris Johnson addressed the nation on March 23 2020, instructing us all that Covid “is the biggest threat this country has faced for decades” and that “you must stay at home”, few doubted that it was a momentous political decision.
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