Setting an ethical direction – how the UK Covid-19 public inquiry can learn from research in the arts and humanities. A ‘meta-analysis’ of research from the Pandemic & Beyond portfolio

Abstract

Executive Summary This report has been commissioned to assist the UK COVID-19 Public Inquiry’s task to understand and evaluate the preparations and response to COVID-19 in the UK. It draws on findings from a set of research projects funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to consider the pandemic’s impacts as these unfolded. The research not only offers substantial academic contributions on subjects relevant to the Inquiry’s deliberations; they also help us centralise ethical reflection as an inevitable component of the Inquiry’s task. In reviewing the evidence of the actions that have and have not been taken over the past two years, this report proposes that the UK Inquiry can and should help us set an ethical direction for the UK moving forward. The most salient and highest level, message summarising findings across the 26 projects included within this study concerns the extent, interconnectedness and urgency of the structural problems that the pandemic has brought into view. The corpus shows how individuals and communities who were socially, economically, culturally disadvantaged before the pandemic were disproportionately harmed by it. This message applies across the diverse contexts over which the corpus ranges, from inequalities in digital access; to racial discrimination in health settings; via unequal access to green spaces for communities; to funding disparities in the cultural sector. Moreover, the strategies the government employed to protect the UK population sometimes reinforced and worsened those disadvantages. It is not the Inquiry’s task to establish what equitable policy choices and effective political decision-making might mitigate these structural inequalities. However, by recognising them, it will demonstrate that future resilience planning to effect a fairer distribution of the costs and protections in any future emergencies depends on a strategic and longer-term ambition to ensure a fairer society. In setting an ethical direction, the Public Inquiry should: ● Acknowledge the role of structural and place-based health inequalities in the pandemic. ● Urge the UK government to take responsibility for these inequalities. ● Encourage the UK government to initiate equitable social policy solutions where harms and impacts are identified. ● Confront the harms to democratic governance and promote democratic debate over a future ‘social covenant’. ● Underline the facility of arts and humanities research for ethical review and future policy making