23 October 2025

(10.00 am)

Lady Hallett: Good morning, Ms Dobbin.

Ms Dobbin: My Lady, the evidence in Module 8 concludes today with evidence from each of the children’s commissioners of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Their evidence is going to be heard together and I wonder if I could ask if each could be sworn.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

Ms Rocio Mbe

MS ROCIO CIFUENTES MBE (affirmed).

Mr Chris Quinn

MR CHRIS QUINN (sworn).

Ms Nicola Obe

MS NICOLA KILLEAN OBE (affirmed).

Questions From Lead Counsel to the Inquiry for Module 8

Ms Dobbin: Perhaps if I take each of you in turn and maybe ask the Children’s Commissioner for Scotland first if you would give your full name to the Inquiry.

Ms Killean: Thank you. My name is Nicola Killean.

Lead 8: If I can ask the Children’s Commissioner for Northern Ireland to do the same, please?

Mr Quinn: Thank you. My name is Chris Quinn.

Lead 8: And may I turn to the Commissioner for Wales.

Ms Cifuentes: My name is Rocio Cifuentes.

Lead 8: Each of you, I think it’s right, has made a statement to the Module 8 of Inquiry, rather than taking each of you to your statement, could I simply ask you each in turn to confirm that its contents are true to the best of your knowledge and belief, and perhaps if I start with you, Ms Killean?

Ms Killean: Yes, I do.

Lead 8: Thank you.

Mr Quinn?

Mr Quinn: Yes.

Lead 8: Ms Cifuentes?

Ms Cifuentes: Yes.

Lead 8: I thought that it might be helpful on behalf of the Inquiry if I ask each of you to give a very brief overview as to how children’s rights are given effect in each of your jurisdictions and really just for the end or so that we can draw out some of the differences, Ms Cifuentes, I was going to start with you first because I think it’s right that in fact Wales has the most established background in terms of having domesticated the UN Convention on children’s rights. Could you explain a bit about that and how it’s given effect?

Ms Cifuentes: Yes, so Wales was the first country to establish the role of Children’s Commissioner, in 2001, with the principal aim of safeguarding and promoting the rights and welfare of children and in delivering my functions I must have regard to the UNCRC, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and my remit covers all of the devolved powers of the Senedd, that affect children’s rights and welfare.

The UNCRC is an international human rights treaty that applies to all children and young people up to the age of 18 and the Welsh Government has adopted the UNCRC as the basis of all of its policy making for children and young people, and in 2011 the Welsh Government introduced the Rights of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure, which placed, and places, a duty on Welsh ministers to have due regard to children’s rights in all of their decision making and in exercising all of their functions.

In 2021 the Welsh Government introduced an updated Children’s Rights Scheme which specifies the tools that Welsh Government should use to ensure that it does give due regard to children’s rights and that tool is the children’s rights impact investments, or CRIAs, as they are known. The Children’s Rights Scheme sets out that that is the tool that is expected to be used to support Welsh Government to formally consider the effects or unintended consequences of any of their decisions, new policies, legislation or advice, and also to enable them to consider specific mitigation measures. It also identifies the importance of proper engagement with children and young people to achieve that.

So that is what the Welsh Government sets out as how it seeks to implement children’s rights approach.

Lead 8: Forgive me, I didn’t mean to interrupt you, I was simply going to ask the question but I think you’ve probably answered it, that those duties on Welsh Government apply to any of the – any policy or law they’re thinking of enacting, not just those acts or policies that are specific to children; is that correct?

Ms Cifuentes: All of them that affect children and young people, yes.

Lead 8: Yes, grateful.

Ms Killean, I think it’s right that Scotland – it’s quite a recent innovation in Scots law that there have been steps to domesticate the convention, but I also think it’s right that maybe Scotland has gone a bit further than Wales in trying to give effect to those rights; is that, broadly speaking, correct?

Ms Killean: So if – I’ll just cover a little bit of that, kind of, change over the past couple of years?

Lead 8: Yes.

Ms Killean: So I understand the Inquiry is familiar with the devolution settlement for Scotland in terms of what areas fall within the responsibility of the Scottish Government, and you’ll also have in my witness statement details about the statutory role of my office, which is, at its core, is also about promoting and protecting children’s rights and holding Scottish Government to account against the human rights framework.

So it was in July 2024 that the UNCRC (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act since then has been in force, and that’s brought the UNCRC into domestic law in Scotland to the maximum extent possible.

So what that means is that children can go to court when their rights are breached, but, just as importantly, it changes culture and practice, hopefully to avoid the need for that action to have to happen.

The Act has also placed obligations on government to undertake children’s rights impact assessments and prepare a children’s rights scheme setting out how the government will ensure compliance with the UNCRC.

And at the time of the pandemic, Scottish Government didn’t have those domestic law obligations, so, in my view, some of the concerns that my witness statement outlines might not have occurred, or might not have occurred to the same extent, had the UNCRC (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act been in force.

One of the things I think it is important to highlight though is that incorporation, while hugely important and significant in Scotland, is still a first step on this journey.

The 2024 Act does not yet extend as far as we would like to see it in Scotland. There are still significant pieces of legislation that are out of scope, and there are still occasions at the moment when new legislation that’s being brought isn’t always being drafted to ensure that it is in scope of that bill.

So we’re still in a process of changing culture and practice to ensure that children are recognised as rights holders involved in decision making, and that all children’s rights are respected, protected, and fulfilled. There is much to do, but having the legal foundations in place now, in a domestic law basis as well, has been absolutely critical.

With or without incorporations, as you all will understand, human rights are legal obligations on the state. And in terms of what happened during the pandemic, one of the challenges in Scotland was around about unclear lines of accountability and responsibility for decisions where Scottish Government had – could delegate operational delivery responsibility, for example to local authorities or non-departmental public bodies, and I know that’s an area of the Inquiry has looked at, for example with the changes to exams and qualifications that happen in Scotland.

Lead 8: Maybe – sorry, I think maybe we might come on to some of those issues.

Ms Killean: Yes, of course.

Lead 8: But I think just for our purposes of introducing each of the structures, then, the key difference, perhaps, between Wales and Scotland is, in Wales, it’s a duty to have regard – due regard to convention rights, whereas in Scotland there is actually, as you’ve described it, an ability on the part of children to directly enforce the rights that are set out in the convention?

Ms Killean: Yes.

Lead 8: I’m grateful.

Mr Quinn, can I ask you then please about the position in Northern Ireland, in terms of children’s rights and how they’re given effect.

Mr Quinn: Yeah. Well, I will start just by making a very quick reference to the UNCRC and its incorporation, and to highlight to the Inquiry that incorporation of the convention is the key priority of my office during my term.

I also wanted to bring the Inquiry back to 1998 and the signing of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, because, as you’ll recall, that signalled a new beginning for Northern Ireland. It brought peace to our region and it made several promises, including a bill of rights for Northern Ireland and a civic forum.

On the back of the Good Friday Agreement, my office was established in 2003. We also had our first Children and Young [Persons’] Strategy, which was published in 2006, and within that strategy there were quite forward-thinking mechanisms, that included a minister for youth, who would have had a committee that worked to them to prioritise the rights and best interests of children, and we also had a Children and Young [Persons] Unit, which was part of how the mechanisms of government worked.

Within that, there were mechanisms for promoting the voice of the child through a participation network and a Network for Youth which, if all had have been fully implemented and sustained, many of the issues within this Inquiry may not have been such – had such a negative impact on children’s lives.

And I do want to point to the legislation that set up my office and within that, there is an article, Article 24 of the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People (NI) Order (2003) that requires me to review the effectiveness of my Office and to publish reports.

So there have been six reports that have been submitted to government that have made several recommendations that I think are really important to this Inquiry, and one of those recommendations is around the duty to consult. So I’ve heard – I heard on the opening day and I’ve hearing throughout this Inquiry that the duty to consult commissioners has been a gap that has been highlighted by those giving evidence. So I think the Article 24 report is a really important part of the dynamic.

I am very conscious and quite concerned that children’s rights, I feel, have been eroded, particularly over the last ten years. I’m sorry to say that we have had government up and running almost as often as it has been collapsed in Northern Ireland, and that has a devastating effect on children, particularly those most vulnerable. So I do think we need to do more.

Lead 8: Sorry to cut in, Mr Quinn, but can I just ask you, in terms of the reports you have provided to the devolved government in Northern Ireland, have – do you get responses to those reports? Did – you know, do you get an answer when you raise concerns about lack of consultation?

Mr Quinn: Unfortunately not. We’re yet to receive a response or any action with regards to the recommendations that were put forward. The last – the last report was submitted to the Department for Communities in 2023, I believe it was October 2023, but I am yet to receive a response to that report.

Lead 8: So, Mr Quinn, just again for the purposes of comparing different parts of the United Kingdom, I think it’s right, from everything you’ve said, that there are not the same structures obviously in Northern Ireland as exist in Wales or Northern Ireland – or, sorry, that exist in Wales or Scotland –

Ms Cifuentes: Yes.

Lead 8: – in terms of the UN Convention –

Mr Quinn: Yes.

Lead 8: – and the domestication of the convention in Northern Ireland; is that right?

Mr Quinn: Yes, absolutely.

And when we look at that through the context of the legacy of the past and how children are still affected by both government instability and, as a society, emerging from conflict, I think the most important and impactful thing that our Executive can do is to fully – fully incorporate the UNCRC into domestic law in Northern Ireland.

Lead 8: Can I just ask you on that, it might be thought, because of the history of troubles in Northern Ireland, that there might be quite well evolved human rights law in Northern Ireland, but is that true of the position in respect of children? Even if we put the convention to one side, are there other ways, I suppose I’m asking you, that children’s rights are vindicated?

Mr Quinn: I think the – the regret that I have is that many of the mechanisms and vehicles that were set up as part of the Good Friday – Belfast Good Friday Agreement we have rolled back on them. Even in terms of the positioning of my office, I am no longer positioned within – centrally within the architecture of Northern Ireland Government, which is – is not compliant with Paris Principles. You know, so it’s really important that my office is independent, so I do believe that we – we’ve stepped backwards, and I would urge our Executive to look at the good things that were set up in the – you know, just after agreement was signed.

Lead 8: Thank you.

What I was going to do then was to move on to ask you about the experiences of the office of the Children’s Commissioner in each of your parts of the United Kingdom during the pandemic. And I should make clear, of course, that you weren’t the commissioners at the time, but I think each of you can speak to the experiences of your office; is that correct?

Mr Quinn: Yes.

Lead 8: Thank you. So if I can, and I know that you have each decided to lead on a specific issue but I wanted to ask you about what you perceived, first of all, to be any shortcomings in the approach that each of the devolved administrations may have taken to children’s rights?

We can come to things that were done well, but just starting, perhaps, with any perceived shortcomings, and I think, Mr Quinn, you were going to lead on this in terms of this point you have touched upon which is that of consultation?

Mr Quinn: Yeah, well, one of the most significant shortcomings during the pandemic was the failure to meaningfully engage with children and young people in decision-making processes, that directly affected their lives. So if you cast your mind back, almost every day we listened to decisions that were being made about children including school closures, including examinations, in Northern Ireland, including the transfer test and how children would transfer from primary to post-primary education. But the lack of engagement with children and young people not only undermined their right to be heard but it also resulted in policies that overlooked the experiences and needs of children and particularly those most vulnerable.

So at the time, young people and children were keen to be part of the decision-making process.

In Northern Ireland, there were several reports published by children themselves but they just weren’t taken into consideration, they weren’t listened to. Children and young people represent around about 25% of our population but I would argue that not only were their views ignored, but their rights were not fully considered in the decision-making processes that we saw.

I do believe that this is a dereliction of duty on the part of government, not to listen and not to take young people’s views seriously.

In Northern Ireland we had, there were plans for a youth-specific press conference but that was on the back of young people appealing for youth-specific information and that press conference happen due to a political fallout. So that legacy of lack of voices lived on. I would argue that children were harmed during the pandemic and they continue to be harmed now.

So not only were their voices ignored during the pandemic but they’re still ignored in this moment. And I think we need to do more to listen to, but also to act upon, the views of children and young people.

Lead 8: Can I just ask you about the reasons for that, and I suppose I ask because there may be politicians, ministers, who, you know, are dealing with the heat of a crisis.

Mr Quinn: Yeah.

Lead 8: And I suppose a reasonable point is, there isn’t time, how do you start convening children in order to be able to inform policy?

Do you have any – do you have a, I suppose, a response to that, or have you thought about how, in these sorts of crises, you can capture the voice of children’s experience in order to be able to inform policies or mitigations?

Mr Quinn: Yeah, well, I think it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the difficult situation that we were in and the hard work that our elected representatives did put in to try and navigate a very difficult set of circumstances. But I would argue that, particularly in Northern Ireland, there are mechanisms in place through our community and voluntary sector. So organisations were engaging with children and young people. There was adequate – young people were having their say within communities and within youth and community organisations.

But those views weren’t filtering up into government. I believe part of the dynamic there is the failure to engage with the commissioner’s offices. My predecessor in her statements had outlined the challenges and how she tried to navigate that.

So I think the, you know, our offices could have been used to greater effect in that respect. And also, I think the third thing is that there’s no legislative background, there’s no – there’s a legislative gap in Northern Ireland around promoting the voice of the child, and ensuring that that is properly resourced and it is meaningful.

So I think government could have listened. They should have listened better. And in fact, children and young people were, excuse the pun, screaming from the rooftops to be heard.

Lead 8: Thank you.

Ms Killean, I was going to turn to you because I think you are going to lead on the issue of child rights impact assessments, which of course are a way of trying to bring the experiences of children to bear upon decision making and policy formulation, although I think from your evidence you would question whether that was done sufficiently effectively in Scotland.

Ms Killean: Yes, so I share my predecessor’s view that children’s rights as a whole were not sufficiently taken into account during decision making within the pandemic. And it was clear that the government considered the pandemic primarily as a public health emergency and not a human rights emergency particularly in the early stages.

And that’s why my predecessor and the team actually spent a significant part of their time in the early stages focusing on trying to promote that message and understanding of how this was a human rights emergency. And a key area that my office was particularly concerned about was the lack of children’s rights impact assessments that were taking place and the quality, if there were some happening.

Children’s rights impact assessments play an absolutely critical role in ensuring that decision makers can identify, prioritise, and address children’s human rights, you know, when they are considering – and I stress the point considering – law policy and practice changes, and given the very significant decisions that were made during the pandemic and the absence of children from those spaces, when those decisions were being made, that was particularly crucial at that time.

The team also looked at where CRIAs were done on some decisions, especially at the beginning of the pandemic and those that were done, what were the key themes, in terms of flaws that were coming through from those and the most common issues that my office identified were that CRIAs were done too late in the process so they weren’t fully informing the decisions that were made. They weren’t acknowledging the range of children’s rights that were engaged in the potential decision-making structure, they often failed to reflect any negative impacts.

We also found that more attention needed to be directed towards a child’s best interest, non-discrimination, and participation, in order to ensure that a proper assessment of rights was conducted in decision making.

As you’ll see from my witness statement, because my office was so concerned about this and the lack of CRIAs then my predecessor commissioned an independent CRIA from the Observatory Of Children’s Human Rights in Scotland and it covered a wide range of children’s rights issues, including education, mental health, poverty, and child protection. And it made recommendations about how decision making could be improved and, if it’s helpful, I have some specific examples I could talk to on that.

Lead 8: Yes, I was just going to ask, Ms Killean, really what – I mean, we’ve seen a copy of the – we’ve seen the work that was done, that was commissioned. And do you think that the principal differences between that CRIA and the ones – and contrasting it to some of the ones that had been done by the government in Scotland is the level of detail and the drawing upon research, for example, to properly understand how children’s lives were being affected?

Ms Killean: Yes.

Lead 8: Is that one of the – or are there other ways in which you would say it was substantively different?

Ms Killean: So I think drawing on research and the depths of that was really important, but I think, as well, it was about that holistic overview and I think that’s often what’s missing: that if there was a CRIA being done, as I mentioned, it’s often too late, but not looking holistically but actually – that was a fundamental issue during the pandemic is that if there was, kind of, siloed working and siloed thinking, so if it was a decision about education then it wasn’t necessarily considering all of the impacts that decision would have on children’s rights to play, children’s rights to their mental health and other issues.

So I think that when the office commissioned that, it was to take a really holistic look across all of children’s rights that were being engaged but also really importantly to make recommendations to government, as well, about certain areas that could be improved.

Lead 8: So again, I think perhaps that’s a point you’ve drawn out in your statement that, and perhaps all three of you may be in agreement about this, it’s not necessarily that a CRIA would change the outcome of a decision, but it might help inform the considerations or the broader policy considerations?

Ms Killean: Yes, and I think when a CRIA is done very well, it has to be entered into with the view that it might change the outcome of the decision, but it may not, but it should highlight what are the other rights that would be, you know, breached or would be under more pressure, where are the harms that children might be, and really importantly, that the mitigations are put in place.

Lead 8: Ms Cifuentes, if I turn to you next, because I think you wanted to lead on vulnerable children, then, in relation to this question of whether or not there were shortcomings or perceived shortcomings in the approach of the Welsh Government in your case.

Ms Cifuentes: Yes, so just to start – just before that, I think just very briefly in terms of consultation with us in general, we were not consulted, as my predecessor has set out, at the start of the pandemic, and particularly around the decision making around school closures, which was a real shortcoming, and we also raised several concerns around the lack of use of CRIAs to informed decision making.

But yes, we did significant work to speak, ourselves, with children and young people, and to understand from them, how they were being impacted. And we, from the evidence that we collected, we did a survey with over 20,000 children and young people responding. There were clear groups being disproportionately impacted.

So just to highlight a few of those. So there was a significant group that we were very concerned about, were children who – for whom school would have usually offered a real key protective measure and a safety net. Schools can be a place where children who have difficult home backgrounds may be going to escape pressures or potential harms from the family context.

It’s also a place that offers food, warmth, and lots of other types of support. So as well as offering the opportunity for children to be seen and for safeguarding concerns to be observed and escalated.

So to take away that safety net really left a particular – was a particular impact on the most vulnerable children, and because there was no CRIA for the decision to close schools and there was – we’ve also heard during this Inquiry that there was no effective plan for closing those schools, it meant that the potential impact on those most vulnerable children was not thought about in advance and mitigations were not put in place.

Schools were left to deal with this clear gap themselves. There was no overall direction from government on what they should do and how they should seek to continue to support those very vulnerable children.

We did, of course, hear about many schools having excellent practice but that was very inconsistent and left to the leadership of individual schools. And we also know that sometimes, when social workers or teachers were trying to reach those children, they weren’t always able to talk directly to children or hear their voice.

So my written submission details – gives more detail of at least three devastating child deaths which have been the subject of child practice reviews which we have, since the pandemic, learnt that the pandemic and Covid was a factor in social workers not being able to see or hear directly from those children. So I think that was a huge concern, and it’s something that I really would urge there to be a change on for future learning.

And there were also, apart from those very vulnerable children who may have been experiencing risk in their home setting, there were also lots of other groups disproportionately impacted, including from the evidence that my office collected, disabled children, ethnic minority children and those from poorer backgrounds.

And, you know, the evidence was really overwhelming. We heard that children with disabilities were much more likely than their peers to feel worried about being – catching coronavirus. They were also much more likely to feel sad and to feel unsafe.

We know that from that evidence that ethnic minority children were also much more likely to report feeling lonely and also unsafe, and poorer children in particular were also more likely to be worried, sad and stressed, and they were also hugely impacted by the digital divide.

So there was clear evidence that my office was bringing forward regularly about the disproportionate impact on vulnerable groups, which we were regularly sharing and we did, after the early stages when we got into the, you know, the pandemic, after the first few weeks, there were more – there were relatively regular opportunities for my office to interact with government, and with senior ministers. That interaction was quite good, and we were being listened to but were we being heard? And were children’s experiences actually being heard and acted upon? And I submit that that did not happen as well as it could have.

Lead 8: Yes, because I think maybe if I help draw some of these points together because I think that some – you’ve divided these topics up but I think your witness statements suggest that these were, some of these were universal across each part of the United Kingdom.

I just wanted to pick up, though, on a point before I move to that, Ms Cifuentes, I think that your report, as well, on disabled children suggested that those children were more anxious about their basic needs being met as well. These were not concerns that were just linked to disability, it seemed that their experiences that they were providing to you were about a range of disadvantages.

Ms Cifuentes: Yes, yes. There were real anxieties about their safety, about their family’s safety, about financial aspects, about their future trajectories, which, yes, anxiety was a real common theme and we undertook two national surveys: one in the summer during 2020 and one in early 2021, and there was a clear decline in overall emotional wellbeing levels and an increase in anxiety for all respondents, all children and young people, but that impacted on disabled children particularly.

Lead 8: I’ll come back and ask you each about the impacts and I know each of you is going to lead, again, on an impact, but just in the final minutes just on this topic, I think pulling these things together, I think it’s right that certainly during the first period of lockdowns, that the experience in each of your jurisdictions was that very few children attended school if they were eligible to attend, so in other words, there was a very low level of attendance of vulnerable children in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; is that correct for each of you?

Witnesses: (All nod).

Lead 8: I think it’s right about concerns that the experiences during the pandemic of specific groups of children but if we take children with disabilities, I think again, it’s right that concerns about their – those children not having access to services, for example, was, again, common to each of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Ms Killean: Yes.

Lead 8: Ms Killean, was –

Ms Killean: I was just going to add two points that I hope are very related in terms of some of the learnings from the CRIA that was undertaken in Scotland. What was also highlighted was data gaps and particularly disaggregated data, and that – and the particular areas that were highlighted were including families where there’s someone with a disability within there, as well as the refugee and asylum-seeking children and Gypsy, Traveller communities and we still don’t believe that that has all been rectified, even since then. And also, I thought just related to the hub provision that was provided within Scotland, as you’ve already mentioned, low take-up, but also, there didn’t appear to be a lead responsibility for assessing the different quality and opportunities, and I guess, I would just point to that in terms of confusion around about accountability and responsibility where the government was able to delegate, you know, certain responsibilities to local authorities.

Lead 8: May I ask, you maybe, Mr Quinn, if I start with you, was the concern as well about inconsistency of provision to children? Was that an issue in Northern Ireland as well?

Mr Quinn: Yes, very much so. And I suppose what I would add to this, that has already been stressed, is that that disadvantage gap widened. You know, so for those children who were most vulnerable, they were most negatively impacted but I think it’s important for the Inquiry to remember that the – for those families, the pandemic, the issue of Covid has not gone away, you know, so there are still issues with regards to access to services.

I’m thinking also of children who are critically vulnerable, children who are disabled, children who have special educational needs and disability, and the long-term impact this is having.

So during the pandemic, and when my colleagues were speaking there, I was thinking back to what children told us. So they told us that they were lonely, they were isolated, their anxiety was getting worse and mental health was getting worse. And those trends have continued.

So if we look at mental health as an example –

Lead 8: I was going to just in fact come to that as the –

Mr Quinn: I’m sorry.

Lead 8: No, you’re racing ahead of me. I was going to turn, then, to ask each of you about what you regard to be the principal impacts of the pandemic on children, and I think, first of all, it’s right that again, there is consistency of evidence across each of your jurisdictions as to what the main impacts have been; is that broadly right?

Mr Quinn: Yes.

Lead 8: But with some distinctions and I think, Mr Quinn, I was going to in fact turn to you first because I think you’re going to lead on the issue of mental health and then I’ll turn to the other commissioners to ask about their subjects.

Mr Quinn: Yes, thank you. And I suppose what I was leading to there was the devastating impact that mental health had – sorry, the devastating impact that the pandemic has had on the mental health and wellbeing of thousands of children in Northern Ireland and across the UK. And the harm is undeniable and it has been well versed within this Inquiry.

I’m very frustrated that there is no clear government recovery plan, and we will come to that later, I hope. But in terms of mental health and how it has digressed in Northern Ireland since the pandemic, we now know that a report published by the Mental Health Champion and Kids [and young persons] Life and Times in 2023 showed us that mental health among 11-year-olds is at its lowest point since 2010. So that’s children who are in primary 7.

We also know that among 16-year olds, nearly half of the young people that we know of are experiencing a probable mental illness. And there’s disparity amongst boys and girls. So girls would be disproportionately affected with regards to probable mental illness and – when we think about the worry and the fear that children experienced.

So we can see that worry and stress has intensified, with only 6% of 16-year olds saying that they never feel worried, compared to almost one in five 11-year-olds.

And why that’s important – I suppose bringing a real life story to this is important. Two days ago, a mother spoke on the radio in Northern Ireland about her children who have special educational needs and who haven’t – you know, they’re not experiencing the services and support that they might have. But the anecdotal evidence that she gave on the radio that that child – one of her children was afraid to let Santa Claus into the house during the pandemic. Because by Santa coming to visit that house he could have spread the pandemic and that child was afraid of someone in the house dying or that child passing on the virus.

So, that is – I mean, that’s quite shocking, that children are still experiencing that fear. And I think we need to do – we need to talk about how we wrap support around children and young people to mitigate against the harm that the pandemic had done and is continuing to do on the most vulnerable.

Lead 8: Can I just ask you, then, some questions about the causal factors. I think that if you look at each of your statements, there’s very stark evidence about children’s experience of loneliness –

Mr Quinn: Yes.

Lead 8: – and the extent to which that seems to have really come through from the survey evidence you carried out. And, in fact, I did want to ask each of you, in terms of what you hear from children and what your understanding is, as to why there was this particular impact on mental health. I know that you probably think they’re very obvious reasons, but really just from the perspective of children and to understand it from their perspective.

Mr Quinn: Could I just jump in really quickly?

I suppose, from my perspective, there are many – there are many reasons. I referred earlier to how we – how we made all these decisions about children without adequate planning, and one of those decisions was to close schools and to educate children online. So children had no choice but to be educated and also to socialise online.

And there’s a balancing act here. You know, we did see how the online world can be very positive for children but, you know, what we done was we accelerated everything. You know, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, they weren’t really in our vocabulary, now these things are part and parcel of our day to day, and they’re part and parcel of children’s education, but what we didn’t do when we pushed young people online was put the adequate safeguards around them. And it’s very, very difficult, in my opinion, to turn the tide.

So we know that people – I think people spent excessive time on screens, and we know that this is particularly damaging for young people and children. And we are seeing now a clear link between excessive screen time and mental ill health and wellbeing. And I suppose when we look at all of that through the lens of child’s rights, and we reflect upon what the UN [Convention] on the Rights of the Child have told us, is that we need to view the online world like we do the offline world, and the children should be fully protected in both of those spaces.

Lead 8: Grateful.

Ms Cifuentes.

Ms Cifuentes: You know, you asked a really simple question as to why was their mental health getting worse and why was it impacted, and I think the answer is also equally simple but really important that we restate it and make it really obvious. We took away children’s basic freedoms for the best part of two years. We took away their freedom to meet their friends, to see their grandparents. We took away their freedom to play, to exercise, to go to school. And I think if any of us think about our own freedoms being taken away in the same way during our own formative years, we have to recognise that that is a life-altering, traumatic and, you know, just pivotal experience that is going to have lifelong effects. And I think it’s that recognition that we unfortunately don’t have now, but we still really need to ensure that we get as an outcome from this Inquiry – is that we recognise the impact, we recognise the trauma, and commit to a really restorative approach to repair the damage that’s been done.

Lead 8: Ms Killean, I understand that when – in relation to this subject, you also wanted to focus on seeing this through the lens of education as well –

Ms Killean: Yes.

Lead 8: – and the recovery of children; is that accurate?

Ms Killean: Yes, absolutely. And as we’ve already heard, I mean, the impact on children and young people and the reasons for that were just so significant, but when we look at that through school closures, changes to the exams and qualifications system – in Scotland in particular, when the decision to bring children back to school was happening, children were being asked to return to an education system that pre-pandemic had already been identified that it had real significant concerns about the systemic support for children with disabilities, with additional support needs, and the ability for children already, pre-pandemic, to access the support for their mental health.

So we have some children now who are returning to education after having been exposed to some additional harms during the periods of lockdowns, and most children had missed out on absolutely critical and vital social and developmental opportunities, from babies right through to older teenagers.

In a paper to the Scottish Government Education Recovery Group in June 2020, my team had highlighted the importance of again taking a children’s human rights approach to any recovery planning, and to emphasise the fact that school was much more about a, sort of, narrow view of learning, and the impact that positive engagement has around about play, rest, you know, protection and that – that holistic view, and really urged government to take that approach.

But instead of looking holistically, in my view, the recovery planning that took place for education took too narrow a view on what the priorities were for the return to education. There was a real focus on a return to the previous normal, and there was little recognition about daily life and work environments outside school had fundamentally changed, and there appears to have been no wide-scale response to the predictable needs for an increased focus on those social developmental elements, socialisation, recovery, and access to an even wider range of supports and services for additional support for learning.

And I thought it was important to note that the Scottish Government’s main Education Recovery Group appears to not have had members from social work, health, allied health professionals, youth work, the third sector, and very, very limited engagement with children and young people to understand from them what it is that they required to be prioritised to help them with a recovery within education.

Lead 8: Ms Killean, can just – sorry, I didn’t want to speak over you, but just in terms of coming back to some of the impacts that Module 8 has heard about and, again, which I think you’re reflecting on the evidence universal to each part of the United Kingdom, so if we look at attendance and the issue over – I know that this has – it’s described slightly differently in each part of the UK, but the very serious concerns that now exist about persistent absenteeism in some children.

I think the second concern that’s been expressed is about behaviour, behavioural issues in school, as well, and then the third, attainment and helping children to recover from what has broadly been described as learning loss.

So Ms Killean, I think just to make sure, perhaps that the Inquiry has understood your evidence, is it your point, then, that addressing all of those things in schools requires a sort of holistic focus –

Ms Killean: Yes.

Lead 8: – on the child –

Ms Killean: Very much so.

Lead 8: – rather than a sort of –

Ms Killean: Yes, and again, I guess, going back to the previous conversations, if a children’s rights-based approach had been taken then hopefully that could have been identified and mitigated. But also, I am worried, particularly in terms of some of the conversations now round about behaviour, that children are actually increasingly being painted as a problem within an education system.

Over the past two years in Scotland there’s been an increased national narrative on concerns about behaviour with children. There’s been a bit of a resurgence in Scotland about – asking about permission to use exclusions more with children, and there’s evidence on increasing use of part-time timetables which do not always have a child’s wish but a parent or carer’s wish for their children to be on part-time timetables. But these impacts should have been predictable. They were predictable, and that much more holistic approach to measures to put in place to actually support children to have additional services allocated, that scale of recovery isn’t evident.

I have to say, of course, I absolutely acknowledge how hard teachers, support workers, and education leaders worked during that time and there is some innovative practice, but it hasn’t been done nationally at scale or in a way that predicted this to ensure that those supports were there in, you know, in place ready for children coming back to school.

And I think my frustration, as well, is that those opportunities were missed, but they’re continuing to be missed at the moment in Scotland, to reform systems, to change policy and practice that wasn’t children’s rights based, to learn the lessons, and to spread the good practice that is out there.

Scottish Government actually commissioned a number of major reports on education reform but it still hasn’t fully implemented or committed to fully implement those, despite accepting most of the recommendations.

You know, one of the other things, if it’s okay, that I was going to say is, is that my office published a report on education just this year, called “This is our lives, it matters a lot”. So in 2025 I’m continuing to raise the same concerns that I could see that my predecessor raised in those, you know, when they wrote in 2020, and that many other organisations have been raising for years, you know, for example, the predictable increase in children who require additional support within education, but still insufficient national planning or resourcing to meet that need.

As we’ve heard already, the fact that children were clearly left out of decision making during the pandemic, however, that continues to be raised as a concern to me by children and young people when I’m out and about doing my work, and I don’t believe it’s been structurally rectified yet.

A really good example in Scotland was that there is an e-learning national school called e-Sgoil, and that is a major opportunity to have strategically invested in that, and whilst government has committed to exploring that, there still hasn’t been that sort of strategic and coordinated approach to that, which is actually something I’ve highlighted as a best practice model and could have huge opportunity for children now who aren’t actually attending school. Some children are accessing education through that model, and more children would like to but they don’t have the resource yet to support that.

But there is also good that can come from that for other children now who can’t access particular subjects, and it would make Scotland more resilient-proof if a future pandemic was going to happen. And I’m –

Lead 8: Sorry, I’m just going – because I know, Ms Cifuentes, I think you also wanted to say, or to give evidence which I think is aligned and also goes to this question of recovery and whether or not, and I think it’s a point for each of you, there is a sufficient national strategy in each part of your jurisdictions. But if I can ask you about that, please.

Ms Cifuentes: Yes, you know, at the tail-end of the pandemic we heard lots of promises to Build Back Better, in Wales, it was, you know, equivalents were being called Build Back Fairer, but those promises and that rhetoric has not and did not translate into clear plans or resources. There were some small exceptions and I, you know, just to give credit where it’s due, Welsh Government did put 5 million towards a Summer of Fun programme in the summer of 2021, which was just to give children opportunities to play and have fun during the summer, which my office played a part in, in encouraging that, and then there was a similar follow-up in the winter of 2021 called Winter of Wellbeing.

But these were tiny, you know, drops in the ocean compared to what is really needed, given the scale of what happened to children and young people. And since then, we – we’ve stopped talking about the pandemic, we’ve stopped talking about recovery. Instead, we talk about going back to normal and as my Scottish colleague has said, we are increasingly depicting children as the problem rather than really seeing their behaviour and attendance as symptoms of the underlying root cause.

I think we really do need a much more robust and focused recovery plan which looks specifically at the needs of children and young people, and is properly resourced and we need to recognise the trauma, we need to resource the, you know, the – what we need to do to rectify and repair. We need to learn the lessons first and hopefully this is what this Inquiry can help us to do. We can’t just assume that we can go back to normal just like that. We need at least a decade of investment in children and young people to support them, because they are still living with the effects.

Lead 8: Mr Quinn, can I come back, you started on mental health, but in terms of any of the other long-term consequences that you would particularly identify in Northern Ireland that children are, as Ms Cifuentes says, still living with.

Mr Quinn: Yeah. I did reference online harm and perhaps I can come back to that because I did want to just follow on with regards to what my colleagues have said about education, and there are a few things within that that are really pertinent.

So I think just to firstly acknowledge that I’m really concerned about growing numbers of children missing their education, and children missing from education, and generally, children missing altogether in Northern Ireland.

We have big issues with data capture and data sharing. In 2015 there was a Children’s Services Co-operation Act that progressed through the Assembly and I would argue in the 10 years that have passed, that Act has laid dormant –

Lead 8: Sorry to cut in, maybe, so is that a piece of legislation that is already in existence that you think could be put to better use –

Mr Quinn: Yes.

Lead 8: – in Northern Ireland maybe to help maybe with issues of data collection or to help with dealing with some of the impacts from the pandemic?

Mr Quinn: Yes, absolutely, and thank you for helping me clarify this point, because the crux of the – or the backdrop or the foundations of that Act are on the wellbeing of children. So I think when we did emerge from lockdowns and pandemic, I think almost everyone said we need to focus our attention on the wellbeing of the child.

I think we’ve put the car into reverse and actually forgotten those things that we’d promised, but the Children’s Services Co-operation Act could and should deliver better for children. It requires – it advocates for, but does not mandate, the putting of resources. But there is a gap within it around data capture and data sharing.

And I guess this relates to some of the evidence that was presented in the Inquiry previously around how our offices received information from government in order to provide adequate advice.

So I, unfortunately, don’t receive adequate up-to-date data so that we can analyse need correctly.

Lead 8: Can I just, before, because that might be an important point just to clarify with each of you, do you have the power to compel the provision of information? I know whether the information exists is a different question, but do each of you have that power?

Ms Cifuentes: No, we don’t in Wales.

Lead 8: Not in Wales?

Ms Killean: – (overspeaking) – investigation.

Lead 8: Sorry, I –

Ms Killean: We don’t have a general power, it’s just within an investigation.

Lead 8: And I take it, Mr Quinn, from what you’ve said you don’t –

Mr Quinn: Yeah. So, similarly, we do have powers to intervene and formally investigate, but in terms of requests, compelling government to give us accurate, up-to-date and timely data back is a – is a gap, I believe.

Lead 8: Thank you.

So, just, again, pulling this all together, as it were, I think is it the position, then, of each of you, just – and again, going back to the pandemic and these longer-term consequences – that there’s an absence of a national plan in each of the devolved administrations that perhaps pulls together lots of these different long-lasting or persistent consequences and seeks to address the whole child, as opposed to perhaps different sectors? Is that – would that be an accurate way of putting it?

Mr Quinn: Yes.

Ms Killean: Yes.

Mr Quinn: And I think broadly speaking, from my perspective, we’ve talked about children’s rights impact assessments, and I believe that’s another gap in Northern Ireland, and I would certainly advocate for mandatory child rights impact assessments. But looking at the example of education and how that could be improved, at the minute we’re seeing a number of regressive policy positions and changes in terms of transform ed, in terms of curriculum review. So I believe that’s going in the wrong direction. But I would hope that a proper recovery plan and an analysis of the impact of how the decisions were made during the pandemic would bode better for policymaking generally and ensure that (a), if we do use education as an example of a policy-changing environment in Northern Ireland, the children’s voice would be paramount in how those changes are made, that the role of the commissioner’s office is paramount as well, and, ultimately, that those changes are viewed through the lens of a child’s rights lens.

Lead 8: I think that probably leads us very neatly into recommendations, and, again, I think each of you is going to deal with a specific recommendation linked to the pandemic and what you think could be done differently, or what could be changed, so that a response to any future pandemic might be more, I suppose, sensitive to the potential consequences on children.

So if I could perhaps ask each of you to lead on a recommendation, and then I think, after that, we might focus on some of the recommendations that you would have specific to each of your jurisdictions, but I think of you has a recommendation that you think is a UK-wide one; is that right?

Mr Quinn: Yes.

Lead 8: Okay.

Ms Cifuentes, shall I start with you and ask you to lead, please, on what you think is the first recommendation.

Ms Cifuentes: So, we have heard strongly during this Inquiry that the interests of children, as opposed to adults, are not always and haven’t been given the weight that they deserve. And we, as commissioners, as the statutory advocates for children in our respective jurisdictions, haven’t been adequately consulted through the pandemic.

So the shared – first shared recommendation that we would like to make is that there should be a duty to introduce – to meaningfully consult with us all and to respond to us in any future pandemic or national emergency situation, and in advance of any pandemic or national emergency situation.

We believe that that would help to give children and children’s rights and children’s interests a stronger position.

We believe that that should not be done instead of talking directly to children, because that is an important separate recommendation and action that we think needs to be taken.

But, yes, we think that a clear action that could usefully come out of this Inquiry is that there could be an introduction of a duty to meaningfully consult with us and to make that a statutory duty on devolved administrations.

Lead 8: And would that – do you have in mind that that would be a general duty or perhaps a duty that’s very specific to national emergencies or –

Ms Cifuentes: So, we consider that to make it a general duty may be actually too much work, potentially, in terms of unfeasible in that – if we were to be required to – or asked to respond to every single thing that government is doing. So we would like this duty to be specific to any potential pandemic or national emergency, to make it practical and effective.

Lead 8: Yes. And presumably, that sort of duty, it would probably also have to recognise that, in emergencies, there may not be that – necessarily the scope to consult before, if emergency action has to be taken, but potentially it could be a more flexible duty to ensure there’s consultation –

Ms Cifuentes: Yes, ideally.

Lead 8: – after the event –

Ms Cifuentes: Ideally it would be before. Ideally. But not only to consult, but also to give due regard to our views. It can’t be a tick-box, tokenistic exercise. It needs to be meaningful.

Lead 8: I’m grateful.

Mr Quinn, if I can then ask you, I think you’re going to lead on a separate recommendation.

Mr Quinn: Yes, and I suppose what I would start with is by reminding ourselves that Module 8 has provided clarity on what happened during the pandemic, but the critical question remains: why did it happen?

And I refer back to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which advocates for children’s rights and best interests to be considered in the decision-making process. That simply didn’t happen, and we’ve no adequate explanation as to why this omission occurred.

And I am of the mind that there has been – as a result, there has been a clear lack of accountability and, indeed, perhaps negligence on the part of government in fully considering the rights of the child.

So I would argue for full and direct incorporation of the UNCRC in the domestic law, and I would also argue that it would not only create legal duties and strengthen accountability, as well as mandate for consultation both with our office and others working with children and young people, and children and young people themselves, but it would result in a cultural shift.

So, what we’ve seen, I believe, across the UK, and particularly in Northern Ireland, is that children’s rights are not always considered.

My office and I, and I presume it’s the same for my colleagues, are dealing with very large numbers of child’s rights violations on a daily basis. The complexity of those violations and the needs of the child has got worse since the pandemic and I think we need to change the culture of how we view children and how we make decisions about them, with them and for them. And I believe through the embedding and incorporating the convention, we can turn the tide and we can embed not only a framework but a culture where children are considered first, especially in times of national emergency.

Lead 8: And I think it follows from what you’ve said, Mr Quinn, that what you’re contending for, then, is approach along the Scottish lines of giving children enforceable rights as opposed to the duty to have due regard; is that correct?

Mr Quinn: Yes, that’s correct, yes.

Lead 8: And that’s something upon which you’re all agreed –

Witnesses: (All nod).

Lead 8: – would be an advance on the position and in each part of the UK?

Witnesses: (All nod).

Lead 8: Ms Killean, can I turn to you, then, and the recommendation that you’re leading on?

Ms Killean: Yes, and as we’ve heard consistently, children and young people were left out of decision-making structures and our shared recommendation it that governments need to ensure that there are inclusive and meaningful participatory structures for children and young people, that these are put in place at a local, regional and national level.

I would also like to stress the importance that those structures ensure that children who are furthest away from enjoying their rights are – that the way in which meaningful participation happens, that those children are a part of those structures, and that those structures then are adequately resourced, and have a form of quality assurance built around about them.

You’ve likely heard often that, in terms of participation structures, children are often expected to adopt adult-led or adult-type models, but if those are quality assured, they’re inclusive and they’re meaningful, then it should be a way forward to ensure that these are child-friendly spaces where children and young people of all different, you know, experiences can be a part of.

And in doing this now, this would ensure that in the future, if there was a future pandemic or national emergency, those structures would already exist and be more robust than what’s in place at the moment and there shouldn’t be any reason why children’s voices and their priorities and concerns wouldn’t be able to be a part of the decision-making processes.

Lead 8: Can I – I mean, this is an issue that Module 8 has touched upon now on a number of occasions, and a number of witnesses have given evidence about the lack of children’s voices and perhaps the difference it makes, when you ask children the question as to as opposed to having their voices mediated through what adults say. Each of your offices, though, did undertake, for example, survey work which laid out actually, I think as we’ve perhaps touched upon, some very stark evidence about the experiences that children were going through.

Can I just ask, why is that sort of approach, why would that not be sufficient? Why do you think there is a need to have some sort of more formal structure that children contribute to?

Ms Killean: So if we look at all of the different decisions that government make, you know, on an ongoing basis and how quickly those have to happen in an emergency situation, I think that it would – you know, each of the commissioner’s offices, whilst we have a duty to ensure that children and young people are involved in our work and we focus on children and young people who are more vulnerable, as well, we are tiny organisations, and often, you know, we just don’t have the resource to ensure that for all of those areas, especially at pace, that could be captured. And the work that my office did, it very much relied on the third sector and civil society to provide that information.

So I think, as we’ve already heard this morning, there are great civil society organisations out there who are doing this at community-based level, at a regional and sometimes at a national level, but they are not always included in the structures when, you know, very significant decisions are being made.

So I absolutely believe that, you know, government has to take more of a role in ensuring that they have the resource they need to ensure that it’s ongoing, it’s not just an emergency situation; it’s an ongoing part of the culture of how children are included in policy making and improving practice, and in law reform. And that that structure and investment in that resource would ensure that children were much more a part of the decision-making process in the future.

Lead 8: I’m just – the Inquiry has been asked on behalf of the Children’s Rights Organisations to ask a question of you, so I’m just going to ask that because I want to make sure you’ve had time to answer it. And the question is: to what extent is the role or impact of the children’s commissioners undermined by there being no statutory duty on bodies to comply with the convention?

So I think that’s probably, Ms Killean, I don’t think you are in that position so I think it might be the Welsh and Northern Irish commissioners who can speak to that.

Ms Cifuentes: Yes, we would very much like to see full incorporation of the UNCRC into Welsh legislation, and further, that could be progressed by further rollout of the children’s measure 2011 that already exists, with the due regard duty that exists on Welsh Government Ministers, that – we are asking for that to be extended to local authorities and health boards, because if local authorities had had that duty during the pandemic, some of their decision making might have been different.

So I just wanted to also add that there are existing mechanisms to support the participation of children and young people in decision making, and – but they are not statutory. So making those statutory would be a real, key way of ensuring that the voice of the child is meaningfully able to be heard on an ongoing basis.

Lead 8: And, Mr Quinn, if I can turn to you.

Mr Quinn: Yeah, I guess with regards to the question about the convention, we need to remember that the UNCRC is a minimum set of standards. And from where I’m sitting, those minimum standards aren’t even getting met. There are a plethora of – thousands, as I said earlier, thousands of children who are currently being failed. So not only do I – is the fact that the convention isn’t fully incorporated into law undermine our roles and our offices but most importantly it undermines our children.

And I don’t understand why a society or a government wouldn’t want to put children first, and I believe that by recognising the CRC as the minimum set of standards, at least the government are saying: look, we’re taking you seriously.

So I hope that answers your question.

Lead 8: I think there’s the fourth recommendation, Ms Killean, I will come to you. But the fourth recommendation I think we’ve already covered, was the idea of having a national strategy.

But Ms Killean, was there something you wanted to come up in on, on the rights organisations question?

Ms Killean: Yes, really linking back to incorporation, and just – when the Inquiry’s considering recommendations, I just wanted to highlight again, if I may, that incorporation in Scotland, although it has – it’s very significant, there is still legislation that is out of scope and we’re still seeing legislation at the moment, new legislation, being drafted that is not in scope.

We that have asked and continue to ask Scottish Government to undertake a legislation audit and create an action plan for when that will be brought back into scope, so it’s certainly something that we believe would strengthen further the additional powers that children and young people and my office have been given within Scotland.

Lead 8: Thank you. And I think each of you, then, has a specific recommendation that you would make to your jurisdiction.

And perhaps if I can pick up on the first one, which I think is a duty that relates to social workers, Ms Cifuentes, were you going to speak to that?

Ms Cifuentes: Yes. So, given what I spoke about earlier and the key role that social workers play in keeping children safe, we would like there to be consideration given to introducing a duty for social workers to proactively alert the police if they are refused entry for a child who is already on a child protection order, and to alert the police and to seek entry, through welfare visit, for example.

So a proactive duty rather than leaving it to discretion, as is currently the case.

Lead 8: I’m grateful.

And I think, in relation to digital infrastructure, Ms Killean, was that a point that you were going to pick up?

Ms Killean: Yes, and I’ve touched on it already, actually, in some of my evidence.

Lead 8: I was going to say I think you have, probably.

Ms Killean: Yes. In terms of a strategic and coordinated investment and expansion of what was good practice during the pandemic and the national e-learning service, I’ve, you know, already called for government to do this, and again would encourage this Inquiry to consider that in terms of the Scottish-specific recommendation, as I believe it would benefit children in the readiness for a future pandemic. It would benefit professionals as well, in terms of broader support, and it would benefit more children now, in Scotland.

Lead 8: I’m grateful.

And, Mr Quinn, I think – did you have a Northern Ireland-specific recommendation that you wanted to return to?

Mr Quinn: Yes, well, I believe I have stressed the importance of the convention, but also the review, the Article 24 report into my office, and my recommendation would be that the recommendations within that report are implemented, and particularly important to this Inquiry are with regard to the Paris Principles and the independence of my office, as well as the duty on government to consult with the commissioner and their office.

Ms Dobbin: I’m grateful.

My Lady, I think that that – those were all my questions, and I think that question of the nation-specific recommendations brings the commissioners’ evidence to a close. I don’t think there are questions from Core Participants.

Lady Hallett: No, there aren’t.

Thank you very much indeed, Ms Dobbin.

Thank you very much – can I call you commissioners, or children’s commissioners – sorry, if I’m lumping you together, I don’t intend to – what you’ve had to say is very helpful.

As I’m sure you’ll appreciate, I’ve heard from a number of people about the difficulties in balancing various rights and that children’s rights aren’t – it’s not a binary question between children’s rights and the rights of the rest of society and adults, and I think it’s really difficult to draw that balance and what you’ve had to say today has been really helpful. So thank you very much indeed. You’ve obviously put a great deal of thought into your evidence, and I’m very grateful to you for the time you’ve taken in preparing for giving evidence and for the evidence you’ve given this morning. Thank you.

Mr Quinn: You’re welcome, thank you.

Ms Killean: Thank you.

Ms Dobbin: My Lady, I think that brings us to the short adjournment.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much, Ms Dobbin. I shall return at 11.30.

(11.15 am)

(A short break)

(11.31 am)

Lady Hallett: Ms Dobbin.

Ms Dobbin: My Lady, can you hear me?

Lady Hallett: Yes.

Ms Dobbin: Grateful.

Before we turn to the closing submissions, with your permission, can I please conclude the oral evidence of Module 8, by inviting you to adduce into evidence a number of statements that are relevant to the evidence that you’ve heard this week. So that’s evidence on health and scientific advice, decision making, youth justice, immigration and the impact of the pandemic on children and young people.

My Lady, these include statements from UK Government departments, former ministers, charities, and non-governmental organisations. Statements relating to higher and further education will also be published today, and I think it’s also right to say that further documents may be published subsequent to this hearing, as well.

And, my Lady, a list of those documents is on the screen.

Lady Hallett: Okay.

Ms Dobbin: The Core Participants will shortly make their closing submissions, but on behalf of all of the Module 8 team, I wanted to thank the Core Participants and their legal teams for the very considered, pragmatic, and collaborative way in which they’ve approached these hearings.

I think I said at the start on behalf of the team that we already knew that there had been a huge amount of work undertaken on their behalf and my Lady, I think that was – that has been clear through the hearing as well. And also, that for all of the people who appear in the room and who make submissions, there are very, very many more on the part of each of the Core Participants who have worked really, really hard, and it’s only because of the work of everyone that these hearings have taken place and I hope, fingers crossed, gone smoothly and that they will continue to go smoothly this afternoon. But we’re really, really grateful.

May I also say a few words of thanks to the whole of the counsel team on Module 8, the solicitors, the paralegals, the secretariat, the operations team, our staff who look after the witnesses so well and the security as well, just to say thank you for helping us to make sure that everything ran smoothly. And again, on behalf of everyone, we’re incredibly grateful for the team effort.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, Ms Dobbin.

Right, we shall now begin closing submissions. Mr Broach, you’re up first. Closing statement on behalf of Children’s Rights

Organisations by MR BROACH KC

Mr Broach: My Lady, for the Children’s Rights Organisations. The past four weeks have heard a litany of failure by decision makers during the Covid-19 pandemic to prioritise or even recognise children’s rights in their decision making.

As Professor Viner put it yesterday, from March 2020 the UK Government dismantled the safety net around our children in many cases, we submit, without even realising the implications of the decisions being taken. These judgements are not merely available with the benefit of hindsight, the implications of many of these decisions ought to have been obvious at the time, if children had been viewed as rights holders rather than merely potential transmitters of the virus.

In the time available this morning, I will address your Ladyship on three areas which the CROs consider exemplify the problems caused by children’s invisibility in pandemic decision making: play, poverty, and prisons.

These submissions are, of course, merely the headline points the CROs would wish to make. All of the CROs have filed witness statements which we hope will assist your Ladyship, in addition to the oral evidence you’ve heard from our witnesses.

I’ll not be addressing your Ladyship on education issues because although these are of the utmost importance, they’ve been covered in depth by the CTI and other Core Participants. The CROs would emphasise, however, that at the point where the government had a chance to compensate children for their stunted educations through a recovery package, those with the responsibility were unable to extract anything significant from the Treasury, further exemplifying the low priority given to children’s rights.

Having looked at the headline issues in the three areas of play, poverty and prisons, I will then outline the key recommendations which the CROs invite you to make to ensure that children are not failed by the government again, both in non-crisis times and in the next civil emergency in the way that happened in 2020 and 2021.

Your Ladyship has heard ample evidence in support of one of the CROs’ key themes in our opening submissions, that the impact of the pandemic on children was not uniform and that certain groups suffered disproportionately. Babies and infants, children and young people from black and racialised communities, looked-after children, and children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities, children living in poverty, including those in households with no recourse to public funds, children in the criminal justice system and children detained in prison or psychiatric care.

Your Ladyship has also heard ample evidence that the context in which the pandemic occurred mattered hugely: the cuts to the social security system, and increases in child poverty in the years leading up to 2020, the depleted state of the children’s workforce, and the cuts to children and youth services in the decade preceding the pandemic.

Turning to our first key theme of play. Your Ladyship has heard how, in England, there was effectively no consideration given to children’s rights to play and the implications for children’s wellbeing if these rights were to be negated when lockdown decisions were taken.

It was striking, in our submission, that in answer to our question, former Prime Minister Mr Johnson appeared unaware that children had been prevented from playing outdoors during lockdown, and agreed that this ought not to have happened.

Your Ladyship has seen the letter from then children’s minister Ms Ford denying any responsibility for play as a policy area.

The Department for Education Permanent Secretary, Ms Acland-Hood, told your Ladyship that the then secretary of state, Sir Gavin Williamson, held a cross-cutting responsibility for children’s issues in the cabinet. However, Sir Gavin himself in his evidence made only one mention of himself as the secretary of state, ultimately, for children, and he was clear that, on many of the major policy decisions, he considered himself excluded from the decision making in any event.

Ms Acland-Hood reflected, to her credit, that she could have done more to encourage Sir Gavin to promote children’s rights to play to his cabinet colleagues, but the CROs submit that the fact that the permanent secretary would need to encourage the secretary of state in this regard is the most damning evidence of how little priority children’s rights were given as a matter of course by key decision makers.

As a result, your Ladyship heard from Playing Out how children were harassed simply for leaving their homes to play and exercise outdoors, with disadvantaged children inevitably suffering worse. Playgrounds were closed because they were seen as places where people would gather and potentially transmit the virus, rather than essential resources for children’s wellbeing.

Whilst Scotland, with a more established focus on children’s rights, took practical measures to exempt children from some of the most draconian lockdown measures, England took a far harsher approach.

Turning to poverty, our second key theme, the picture is very similar. With no effective voice for children in the cabinet, financial measures such as the Universal Credit uplift did not account for family size and were, therefore, any partially effective for children.

When it became clear that a replacement for the free school meals scheme would be needed, there was no one to persuade the Department for Work and Pensions that cash payments to bank accounts would be the best approach so families could meet the needs of their children, instead opting for a voucher scheme that left many children hungry.

Poverty-producing policies, such as the two-child limit and the benefit cap, which decouple need from the level of support a family receives, also remained in place at a time where lower-income families in particular faced higher costs at home and reduced incomes.

Nor was there any effective advocacy for additional financial support that recognised the increased costs and challenges faced by families with children during the pandemic beyond the replacement of free school meals.

Thirdly, in relation to child prisons, where children are most vulnerable to rights abuses, your Ladyship heard that for a 6-month period in 2020 there was effectively no oversight of secure training centres. Ofsted stopped their inspections and the minister, Ms Frazer KC, did not consider it necessary or appropriate to require any external check on what she was being told about the conditions for detained children.

It should not have come as any surprise that once inspections recommenced, the picture in the STCs was revealed to be one where children’s rights to education were being wholly undermined and children were being detained in conditions amounting to solitary confinement. Both Rainsbrook and Oakhill STCs were found to require improvement in their most recent inspections before the pandemic, so it was wholly predictable that there would be failures to respect children’s rights in these closed institutions once the external scrutiny stopped.

Ms Frazer KC gave evidence that she wanted education for children in prison to continue, but when it became clear that this was not happening, the minister and her department took no or no effective steps to address this.

The Ministry of Justice entirely failed to give effect to the Public Health England advice in March 2020 that children were at lower risk from the virus but at high risk from isolation measures. In summary, children in prison were simply treated as small adults.

These problems demonstrate the negative impacts of pandemic decision making on all children in relation to play, disadvantaged children in relation to poverty, and children in the most vulnerable circumstances, those in prison.

The Inquiry has heard many other instances where the impact of decisions on children was overlooked or ignored, from the redeployment of health visitors to administrative tasks, to the emphasis on virtual visits to looked-after children.

What the CROs would wish to emphasise is that all these problems have the same root cause: the structural invisibility and deprioritisation of children and their rights in decision making at the highest level.

We heard from Professor Whitty how there was a budget of allowances, and Mr Johnson agreed that these could have been deployed for children, such as by opening schools and other services by preference to pubs.

The reason this didn’t happen is because key decision makers were not required to treat children as a priority.

The solution to these problems is, therefore, to be found in embedding a focus on children’s rights in the machinery of government, so the government is ambitious for children at all times, but particularly in times of emergency.

And the CROs invite your Ladyship to make five key recommendations in these regard, and note the wide consensus that measures of these kind are needed, that we have heard throughout this module.

First, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child must be incorporated into domestic law across the UK, directly and in full, as has now happened in Scotland.

While a step in the right direction, the due regard duty in Wales is insufficient. Children need to have the substance of their rights respected, not merely consideration given to them. Incorporation will need to include both substantive rights such as the right to play, and also the vital procedural safeguards such as the right to participation in Article 12.

Second, there must be a named cabinet minister for children with cross-governmental oversight of children’s issues in the round, not just their educations, and responsibility for developing and delivering an overall strategy for children.

The Secretary of State for Education should become, in our submission, the Secretary of State for Children, or perhaps Children, Schools and Families, as was previously the case.

Third, as part of UNCRC incorporation, there must be a general duty for children’s rights impact assessments to be conducted when public functions are being exercised which impact on children, including a duty to ensure children are consulted and participate in their development.

Fourth, binding child poverty reduction targets must be included in the upcoming child poverty strategy with regular public reporting obligations. This accountability is essential for the progressive realisation of children’s rights in relation to their right to adequate standing of living but also their right to health, education and play.

And fifth, the Secretary of State for Children should have lead responsibility for a children’s plan for national emergencies, that includes a structured approach to key predictable decisions, such as determining under what circumstances schools and other essential services would close, alternatives to closure, plans for providing education and other services if the schools do close, including mitigations so that disadvantaged children are not hit hardest.

Specific plans for early years provision and health visitors and measures to safeguard children made particularly vulnerable by their circumstances, including children in prison and detained by reason of their mental health.

Children and their organisations will, of course, need to be – participate in the creation of such a plan, including young children, whose views and experiences are too often ignored.

The CROs further ask the Inquiry to recommend that the UK Government acknowledge the sacrifices made by children and apologise to children for the mistakes the government made in failing to promote and protect their rights.

To conclude, my Lady, the CROs wish, again, to recognise and acknowledge the devastating impact the pandemic has had on children and young people and their families, including those who lost their lives, those who lost people they loved, those now suffering from Long Covid, and all of those whose childhoods were harmed in a way which has either not yet been realised or remedied.

We are grateful to the Inquiry for the opportunity to participate in this crucial module and for the open and collaborative approach taken by the Inquiry’s legal team throughout.

We will file more detailed written submissions which we hope will assist your Ladyship in reaching conclusions which will ensure that in the next civil emergency children’s rights will be better protected, recognising that children may only be 25% of the population but they are a hundred per cent of our future.

I’m grateful, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Broach.

Mr Twomey, I am so sorry I’ve been mispronouncing your surname – throughout the module. I really do apologise. Closing statement on behalf of Article 39 by MR TWOMEY KC

Mr Twomey: Not at all, my Lady. I’m very grateful.

My Lady, notwithstanding Ms Willow’s passionate and effective advocacy for children’s rights from the witness box, Mr Studdert of Irwin Mitchell continues to instruct me to make these closing submissions together with my learned friend Ms McCabe.

When Sir Gavin Williamson answered our question about the systems and processes in place to implement his general statutory duty to promote the wellbeing of children, his answer was big on the personalities involved, but short on specifics. Indeed, the only specific, notwithstanding advance notice of the question, was the provision of children’s rights impact assessments, yet it’s striking that within the hundreds of thousands of pages generated by this module to the Inquiry, there’s only evidence of two such assessments undertaken by the DfE during the pandemic, the one undertaken in respect of the 2020 Amendment Regulations found by the Court of Appeal to be flawed, and the one for the successor to those regulations.

The twice iterated cross-government commitment to give due consideration to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in matters of legislation or policy concerning children didn’t even feature in his answer.

By the time of the pandemic that commitment had existed for a decade though, of course, it didn’t have any force of law behind it, unlikely in Wales and now Scotland.

How is it that, against the backdrop of the pandemic, when children’s rights, interests and wellbeing were so profoundly engaged, decisions taken by government from playgrounds to prisons, from schooling to safeguarding, were made with no more than two child rights impact assessments? Is it any wonder, therefore, that one is left with the clearest impression that during the pandemic children were overlooked?

We will, in our written submissions, provide my Lady with the details of the evidence which demonstrates this is far more than merely an impression.

The Inquiry’s decision to grant Core Participant status to Article 39 was, I’m sure, largely influenced by its successful challenge to those regulations. The regulations and the challenge provide a compelling case which we will develop in writing for the three recommendations primarily sought by Article 39: one, incorporation of the UNCRC; two, a statutory obligation to consult with the Children’s Commissioner; and three, a cabinet minister with responsibility for children.

But briefly, as the secondary legislation which made such substantial and wide-ranging changes to the statutory scheme for children in care, firstly, how could it be that in modern British society, such significant changes could be so dreadfully mischaracterised?

Second, how could government not see that if all children were to become more vulnerable across society as a result of the pandemic, safeguarding for the most vulnerable children, those in the care of the state, should have been increased, not reduced. And third, how could it be that the government failed to see what the Court of Appeal found, namely that given the impact of the proposed amendments on the very vulnerable children in the care system, it was conspicuously unfair not to include those bodies representing their rights and interests within the informal consultation the secretary of state chose to undertake?

And it defends its position, of course, up to the Court of Appeal.

And there remains no good explanation for these failures save for the DfE to assert, in effect, that, “Well, notwithstanding our admitted failure to meet the statutory obligation to monitor the impact of the regulations, we made a few phone calls, and we think it was all okay.”

During these hearings, we have been told by those who made such profound judgement calls that they were personally committed to children. They wanted to do right by them. But generalised care and concern for children, warm sentiments, however strongly felt, however genuine, are simply not enough as their decisions and scrutiny of them reveal. Indeed, if systems and processes are found to have been wanting, as we submit they were in the pandemic, such sentiments are irrelevant and are of little significance for a future pandemic or civil emergency.

It’s a truism that children are at the heart of decision making in families up and down the land. As a general rule, parents grandparents and others organise their working and non-working lives around their children’s wellbeing and happiness.

Conversely, on a macro level, children too often fall out of sight. The evidence heard by this module has largely concerned school closures rather than social care, no doubt as this mirrors the attitude towards children in government at the time.

We will provide an analysis of the evidence to provide the point that, across its decision making, children, especially those in care, fell out of sight, and to explain how Article 39’s three main recommendations would ensure that this would not happen again in a future pandemic.

But, for now, one example suffices: former Children’s Commissioner for England, Baroness Anne Longfield, gave the clearest evidence that there were no formal systems and structures set up for consultation between her office and government departments, both before and during the pandemic, despite her office having then existed for 15 years.

The significance of these omissions is profound when one reflects on her powers, which include advising the secretary of state on the rights, views, and interests of children. Something had clearly gone awry across government for these building blocks of routine consultation not to have been in place by the spring of 2020.

Incorporation of the UNCRC and a statutory obligation to consult with the Children’s Commissioner in matters of policy and legislation affecting children would address these lacunae and would protect the rights of children in the event of a future pandemic.

Mr Johnson explained, in what we suggest was a less than convincing response to my Lady’s last question of him, as to the need for a cabinet minister for children, that parents should be responsible for children. And not only does that view immediately exclude those children living in institutions or without a parent capable of making responsible decisions, it ignores the more important point that children, like adults, require effective government structures, require decision making and action.

In times of emergency, the Johnson preference for parents knowing best breaks down, because all children in a pandemic are vulnerable, and vulnerable to poor government decision making.

Routinely, one has heard in evidence from those who made the decisions the familiar refrain, “Well, decisions had to be taken urgently against a background of great uncertainty.”

And we say it’s precisely because a pandemic or a national emergency engenders panic in government and requires swift decision making that the structures and the guide rails need to be in place to ensure that children are not an afterthought or forgotten altogether, that their rights are not overlooked, and that government is required to listen to those who advocate for children.

Incorporation of the UNCRC and the statutory obligation to consult with children’s commissioners will provide those guide rails.

In order to prevent children being overlooked again in the event of another pandemic or a national emergency, it’s also essential that a minister with cabinet status should be created, not least as so many issues relating to children cut across departments. A cabinet minister for children would be required to work across government departments to enable the welfare of children to remain a high and consistent priority.

Anne Longfield’s evidence was that whenever she made representations in respect of policy areas outside the DfE, such as in relation to prisons or immigration, it was those other departments which responded, even if she was raising serious matters of child protection, which is the DfE’s stated responsibility. And this also Article 39’s experience.

One of the more surprising if not startling pieces of evidence came from the former Children’s Minister, Mrs Ford, who volunteered as one of her reflections that there was arguably no need for a minister for children. That demonstrated a wholesale failure to grasp the following obvious points: children have distinct needs, and a very precious time of human development. They’re not simply smaller versions of adults. Children depend upon adults and adult society for their development. What we do and what we don’t do really matters.

At a general level, children are vulnerable to a far greater array of harms than adults, and the injury inflicted on them, psychological, emotional and physical, can be life threatening, life limiting and lifelong, in way that harms inflicted on adults are not.

This Inquiry cannot protect children in a future pandemic from the appointment of well intentioned but ineffective ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ ministers, as Robin Day famously put it, those who might be charged with significant decisions profoundly affecting them. But it can protect them from their erroneous decision making. It can recommend the guide rails which are necessary to protect children’s rights in the event of another pandemic or civil emergency.

The three guide rails we ask the Inquiry to consider would put children deep into the machinery of government in calmer times, as Mark Drakeford said, making it difficult, if not impossible, for their rights and their wellbeing to be an afterthought in future times of natural crises.

My Lady, thank you for this opportunity to address you and before I finish, may I finally thank Ms Dobbin King’s Counsel and her team for tirelessly helping us throughout the hearing. Her openness to approaches, especially whilst carrying such heavy responsibilities, has been nothing short of remarkable and reflects so well on her and her skillful and industrious team.

Lady Hallett: Very grateful indeed, Mr Twomey, thank you very much.

Ms King. Closing statement on behalf of Coram Group by MS KING KC

Ms King: My Lady, I continue to represent the Coram Group together with Ms Logan Green and instructed by Jenner & Block.

The context in which these submissions are made is as Dr Homden CBE from Coram Group stated that: pandemic or no, it is a key moral duty of society to prepare for the next generation of citizens, and of course, unless we do so, we will reap the consequences.

Covid-19 posed a major challenge to us as a society, many key and essential workers, and many of those in government, rose to that challenge and we pay tribute to them. But there were real harms which were engendered by the inadequacies of the government response. Coram is confident that this Inquiry will not shy away from identifying them so that they may be mitigated or avoided in the future.

The Inquiry knows that Coram considers that the pandemic compounded existing inequalities for children in our society. Whilst some perceptible progress was gradually being made to close the educational attainment gap prior to the pandemic, there was rising child poverty, and resources were stretched after a period of austerity. In addition, there was a high incidence of children and young people who were disabled, living with mental health conditions, experiencing economic and housing insecurity and living in households where domestic and other forms of abuse were prevalent.

That was the low baseline from which too many children started when the pandemic struck.

In a number of ways, the pandemic served to amplify the disenfranchisement and privation suffered by many children. The evidence supports the view that lack of planning meant that those harms could not be mitigated in a timely way or at all. It is also evident that the recovery has been very slow and that there is more to be done.

As the evidence shows there was a lack of preparedness for the pandemic and such planning as there was, was one-dimensional, failing to consider alternative but realistic scenarios. There was a lack of foresight at the very start of the pandemic as to the direction of travel and the contingency planning that was necessary. This was driven by so-called optimism bias in the face of stark scientific data being fed to the key government departments.

Some of the shortcomings arose out of a failure to anticipate what was inevitable. This was exacerbated by an absence of consultation with, as opposed to a tendency to inform, key individuals and organisations as the pandemic came into sight and developed.

It included a failure to engage with the Coram Group as data became available and the experiences of children and young people started to be understood.

Dr Homden gave cogent evidence about the willingness of Coram to play its part in the response to the pandemic, and the fact that there was an absence of consultation, not only with Coram, but with other important organisations in the third sector and beyond, including with stakeholders such as the Children’s Commissioner.

This seems to be a reflection of the failure to give any or any sufficient priority to children’s needs during the pandemic. It was as if children’s wellbeing was being treated as an afterthought when policy was considered and legislation enacted in response to the emergency crisis.

This was coupled with a lack of attention as to how children might be treated differently from adults and could be made subject to different rules. This – adult-focused approach had a deleterious impact on children including their ability to learn and engage through peer-to-peer play.

Coram acknowledges and is grateful for the efforts which many school teachers and educational professionals made to educate and monitor children and young people during the pandemic.

The circumstances were unprecedented and required an urgent response, but the absence of planning for country-wide school closures and the abrupt change of plan in mid-March 2020 has been rightly interrogated at length by the Inquiry. SAGE evidence from as early as 4 February 2020, well before mid-March, was that school closures were a realistic and distinct possibility, yet it appears that all of the focus within the Department for Education was on keeping schools open.

That was informed by a steer from central government but even after having heard the evidence from Sir Gavin Williamson and Mr Boris Johnson, it is difficult to understand why so little thought was being given and planning undertaken as the prospect of shutting schools for most children loomed increasingly large.

The Inquiry has received evidence from many about the myriad ways in which schools are important to the wellbeing of children. Attending school is about much, much more than learning. Teachers and pastoral staff are often on the front line of safeguarding and identifying behavioural problems and additional needs in children. The pandemic prevented the sort of eyes-on approach that might enable a teacher to pick up on emerging difficulties and safeguarding concerns. When looked at in conjunction with the relaxation of the regulations governing the delivery of social work, non-attendance at school heightened the risks of a child suffering harm becoming invisible.

As to the delivery of education during the pandemic, the Inquiry has heard from those responsible for decision making in respect of schools and evidence, some critical, from the professionals required to deal directly with the impact of the virtual closure of schools.

The Inquiry has seen the figures for school attendance for students who were entitled to go to school. The Inquiry has heard from those who were involved in the provision of education and research as to the difficulties with categorisation of what constituted a vulnerable student and the deficiencies in respect of public messaging and guidance about the exercise of teachers’ discretion which meant that those who needed to be in schools so often were not.

The Inquiry has also heard about the digital divide and the delays in providing devices to children.

Children have a right to an education. Regrettably, the contract between parents and schools appears to have been broken and the expectation that children will attend has been eroded.

Much of the early response to the pandemic appears to have been predicated on the fear that there would be rates of absence in the workforce in far higher numbers than in fact occurred. However, as alluded to already, the changes to the social work regulations failed to put the emphasis on making home visits unless it was safe to do so rather than the other way round. This was a misstep, and meant that the sort of 360 assessment which a home visit might allow did not happen.

Lack of guidance from government about how to progress adoptive placements meant that Coram had to produce its own guidance in an attempt to mitigate delays for children for whom making progress was time critical.

And as for asylum-seeking children, Coram was grateful to the Inquiry for indicating that it would allow, as part of its broader consideration of the impact of the pandemic on children, a spotlight to be shone on how asylum-seeking children fared in the pandemic.

It is regrettable that, ultimately, Sir Matthew Rycroft was not asked about this issue. The Inquiry is asked to review the written evidence in respect of the treatment of asylum-seeking children in the pandemic.

As Coram indicated, the impact on such children was different and distinct from their peers. Children with compounding vulnerabilities were placed in unregulated placements by the Home Office, and often unable to access any support or services.

This left many at risk of exploitation and criminality, and facing the challenges of navigating the asylum application process with limited or no support.

It is very troubling that a significant number of asylum-seeking children went missing during the pandemic, and their whereabouts remain unknown even to this day.

As to data sharing, a consistent theme in the Inquiry has been about the lack of centralised government data collection to inform decision making and the lack of provision of data to enable stakeholders to make informed decisions themselves, offer cogent advice, and even simply to understand the imperatives driving policy and guidance.

So, looking forward, Coram would say this: impact assessments do not require there to be a cabinet minister for children. The upholding of children’s rights and a focus on their needs does not require the recognition of the UNCRC. However, the fact that England has neither meant that there was no one in cabinet with the specific role of ensuring that children’s interests were given any sufficient priority.

The tensions between the Prime Minister and the Department for Education over of the issue of the closure of schools brings into sharp relief the importance of having a minister with a portfolio overseeing all aspects of policy which touches on children and young people, to avoid siloed thinking and ensure children and young people are at the centre of planning and decision making.

Equally, without children’s rights formally being recognised, it was easier to dispense with or forget about consulting with those who have children’s rights and interests at the top of their priority list, and easier to ignore, forget, or fail, to have regard to children as a subgroup of society.

There needs to be a comprehensive set of plans in anticipation of the next pandemic. Those undertaking the planning must consider a range of emergency plans addressing a number of different scenarios. The plans will need to be robust but flexible. Coram stands ready to assist.

The lack of communication with third sector partners cannot happen again. The government has a phalanx of potential interlocutors upon whom to call to assist now and in the future, of whom the Coram Group is one.

However, offering advice without knowledge is often unhelpful and generally unwise. Information sharing is vital to the smooth running of any response to a future pandemic. Coram hopes it will play a part in the planning process and will be able to contribute to the provision of data and be prioritised to receive it both in planning for, and in the event of, a future public health emergency.

My Lady, all that remains is for me to thank your Ladyship for allowing Coram the opportunity to contribute to the Inquiry, and to thank the team behind, and Counsel to the Inquiry, for all of the work that has been put into presenting such a comprehensive set of evidence to the Inquiry.

I’m grateful.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, Ms King.

Mr Friedman. Closing statement on behalf of Disabled People’s

Organisations by MR FRIEDMAN KC

Mr Friedman: My Lady, we act for three national Disabled People’s Organisations, or DPO. They are Disability Rights UK, Disability Wales, and Disability Action Northern Ireland. And we too, at the outset, thank you and the team for the evidence that you’ve been able to gather together in this module.

As the Inquiry reaches its late stages, it confronts a difficult truth with few consolations. What happened during Covid-19 to children and young people, especially disabled children and young people, was unjust, disproportionate, largely inevitable under the current systems we have, and yet there is no plan for reform or reparation.

The claim of injustice can be formulated in this way: generational harms were caused by closing schools to disabled children and young people, and limiting their associated access to therapies and other specialist provision.

In addition, a large cohort of children have been disabled by the steps taken by government to control the virus. Consolation for this might have been found in evidence that school closures made a significant impact on transmission rates, but the evidence does not support that conclusion.

SAGE and the CMOs were careful at the time to emphasise that reduced pupil attendance would make, at most, a limited contribution to controlling the R rate, and the distinct necessity of the measure was never disentangled from other measures. To this day, the bulk of the evidence is that the relative role of children in transmission is likely to have been smaller than adults, and considerably smaller yet for younger children.

The starting position is important because of what the Covid generation of younger disabled people can be told about the proportionality of the measures that affected them.

Despite knowing that there was continuing uncertainty about transition rates concerning children, this category of the population was withdrawn from their education, their friendships, their support networks, and their health and therapeutic care. It was foreseeable that this would cause harm to child development, loss of learning, damage to life chances, and broader jeopardy to health and wellbeing, and yet these consequential hams were not appreciated or mitigated as much as they could be.

Even if initial closure is accepted as a precautionary policy, too little consideration was given to alternatives that other countries soon instituted, such as redesign of school premises, half-day rotas, regional closures based on R rates, or laying on travel services and staggered school runs, cordoned from other travellers with limits to parents intermingling.

From a childcare perspective, there will forever remain an incongruity that children were stopped from going to school to lower the R rate while care sector workers were forced to move incessantly between different settings and other jobs because there was no economical planning model to prevent that happening.

Simultaneously, essential health and therapeutic services such as to visit newborn babies, and to provide life-changing speech and language, occupational and physiotherapies, were cut for children and young people because of redeployment of staff into adult nursing and medicine, and sometimes into administrative and cleaning roles.

As for school attendance, the DPO case about the stigmatising, excluding and distorting flaws of the vulnerable child exception have been accepted by several witnesses.

Of those flaws, first, the messaging became extraordinarily jumbled. What was a parent or child to make of being told, “Stay home and stay safe, although the most vulnerable of you can come to school, but only if you are unsafe at home, and not before it is decided that you could be safe at school”?

Second, more dynamic modelling and data assessment could have established that opening schools up to a broader cohort could be done safely. There could have been a genuine system of hybrid schooling if not from day 1, then soon, with an aim to optimise attendance based on the virus transmission rate tolerably prioritising children and young people in need of support, including students with SEN support, especially given the known pre-existing difficulties which young people and parents faced in obtaining education and healthcare plans.

What we now know is that none of this was ever modelled.

Third, various definitions of vulnerability were narrowly focused on immediate health risks, safety and safeguarding, but largely overlooked other foreseeable serious harms arising from the loss of special educational provision and health interventions resulting in sometimes irreversible regression. This revealed a lack of understanding by decision makers of the various things that happen for disabled children in school, whether in mainstream school or special school, in terms of caring for people’s health and development as well as providing education.

Students rely on the physical presence of classroom assistants or regular speech and language therapies or physiotherapies, or methods and routines for managing eating disorders which could either not be replicated remotely or in other lockdown settings, and which caused fundamental pressures on family households if required to act as substitute providers.

Fourth, school closure was itself likely to generate vulnerability especially for those with pre-existing SEN requirements through loss of routine, respite services, and isolation leading to increasing stress and distress within family households. There is strong evidence that the pandemic response contributed to new mental health conditions.

Referrals to CAMHS services reached record heights, and there were extraordinary increases, for instance, the 90% rise in admission of children and young people to hospital for eating disorders, even at a time when the threshold for non-Covid hospital admission had to be raised.

Fifth, leaving a range of decisions to school discretion in terms of risk assessment, and what became the otherwise vulnerable category for going to school, was never going to work consistently across the country in an unplanned for, and difficult to understand, pandemic. It assumed that vulnerable children would be found despite insufficient data infrastructure. There needed to be a much more dynamic interplay of advice and understanding between central, regional and local actors as well as with parents and children themselves.

Sixth, as with adult social care easements, governments suffered from an optimism bias that local responses could still meet needs despite enacting statutory easements to use reasonable endeavours to comply with mandatory education and healthcare plans and child social care obligations.

These services should not have been afforded these wide-ranging discretions on a blanket basis across the country, especially without systematic reporting and monitoring of how the easements operated.

Which brings us back to the sensitive proportionality calculus, not as a matter of law, but in terms of what we candidly tell this generation of children and young people and especially disabled people: the decision making on school closures precipitated what Professor Newlove-Delgado described as a systemic shock to the wider determinants of child health with impacts on family functioning and income, access to healthcare and education. This extracted a terrible price in terms of aggravating pre-existing impairments and, crucially, generating new ones.

With greater prioritisation and better design, higher numbers of children in need of support could have been integrated into on-site schooling sooner and an effective policy to make that happen would have had critical benefits in diminishing foreseeable harms.

But my Lady, there is an important qualification: as with adult social care, there remained dispiriting indicators that our present systems of government are ill designed and ill disposed to do things differently. The challenge faced by those who argue for smarter and more targeted NPIs, and in this context, more proportionate restrictions on access to schooling, healthcare and other specialist support, is that the potential for more sophisticated and flexible services has become increasingly more difficult, not least because various special education needs, health and social care systems were in a state of profound instability and underfunding before the pandemic and have only suffered more ever since.

If we do not have sufficiently resourced and accountable systems that can generate adequate relationships and communication between different levels of government, institutions, experts, family and children and young people themselves, then we are destined to repeat the largely inflexible responses that occurred in this pandemic because we are not sufficiently led, organised or integrated to achieve anything better.

The extent to which the inevitability of these generational harms did not properly figure in the proportionality calculus, also shows why prioritisation of children’s rights cannot be guaranteed without far greater constitutional focus on them.

The situation for disabled children and young people is even less secure. The human rights treaties in this context are not just values, but toolkits for policymaking, and insufficient focus on these rights, especially in UK Government decision making, was a barrier to devising fair, proportionate and effective policies affecting disabled children and young people.

The difficult conclusion comes to this: no adult society can sit easily with a reality that, when faced with a dilemma between damaging children, especially disabled children, and protecting ourselves, on some considerable level we opted to protect ourselves.

If the outcomes were largely inevitable under current systems, surely the continuing justice lies in the fact that there is no plan for reform or reparation.

Repair begins with the acknowledgement of these difficult truths. Reform comes from a realignment of values shared between government and society around what is important, and the creation of organisation, policy and practices now to ensure that those values can be delivered upon in an increasingly uncertain and unstable future.

The testimonies that this Inquiry has gathered from children and young people do give some grounds for optimism. They tell us there is a generation of people, disabled and non-disabled, who will more readily appreciate the reality of social vulnerability as they come to succeed us.

Thank you, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Friedman. I’m very grateful.

Mr Wagner. Closing statement on behalf of Clinically Vulnerable

Families by MR WAGNER KC

Mr Wagner: Thank you, and good afternoon.

I act for Clinically Vulnerable Families together with Hayley Douglas, Lameesa Iqbal, and we are instructed by Kim Harrison and Shane Smith of Slater & Gordon.

I start by thanking the Chair, Counsel to the Inquiry, solicitors to the Inquiry, and all of the excellent building staff for their dedication and collaborative way that this module has proceeded.

In my opening, I identified three principles: schools must be safe; and where they’re not safe enough, children must be given appropriate support to continue their education at home; and, finally, that we cannot offer safety and support unless we recognise the impact Covid-19 has had and continues to have on clinically vulnerable children and families. They need status as a distinct group.

So: safety, support, and status.

After four weeks of hearings, there is ample evidence for the Inquiry to make strong findings in all three respects. I’ll start with safety.

Making schools safe is the only way to solve or at least reduce the dilemma of whether to send children to school during a pandemic. This not just the dilemma for authorities; there is good evidence that many schools can be made safer for clinically vulnerable children and those in clinically vulnerable families. In fact for all children.

It’s very important not to fall into a false dichotomy.

Susan Acland-Hood, the former Department for Education Permanent Secretary, said:

“… taking decisions about school closures in a pandemic, there are some things where the impact is so great that it genuinely should be weighed up against the risk of mass fatality.”

But it’s possible to focus on the bigger picture and still be flexible and compassionate enough to ensure that clinically vulnerable families are not left behind. And improving school safety is one of the only ways to reduce the sharpness of that dilemma in future, because if a school is safer, then sending children to the school will do less damage to the R rates.

How can we make schools safer? There’s plenty of evidence now before the Inquiry.

Professor Catherine Noakes said:

“… the evidence base is all pointing in the same direction: that better ventilated environments provide a healthier environment for children and adults. They help you mitigate against disease, they help you mitigate against other respiratory conditions.

“If those environments are designed well and they’re thermally comfortable, they create better-quality learning environments.”

Sir Chris Whitty said:

“… it’s an uncontroversial statement from an epidemiological point of view … that improving ventilation in schools would be a good thing. It would [not just be] for future pandemics … of a respiratory sort like this one, but also for … year-on-year flu and other respiratory infections, which cause a lot of trouble in schools, lead individuals not having their schooling …”

The second point is that ventilation works not just for clinically vulnerable children but for everyone.

Professor Noakes said:

“… improving ventilation is not just about reducing Covid transmission; it’s also about improving those environments for other respiratory infections, improving them for children who might have asthma, improving them in terms of the cognitive performance of children in schools, and the learning environment.”

Sir Hamid Patel suggested linking CO2 data with learning outcomes:

“Because if CO2 – if ventilation, good ventilation is important for health, if we can establish that good ventilation is important for learning, for concentration, then that means that schools that don’t have good ventilation, poorer ventilation, their kids are disadvantaged even before they step into an exam hall.”

Despite all this evidence, there is a reluctance to recognise that clean air and ventilation in schools is important. And there’s a strange disconnect between the high level of proof which some people require to show that measures like these work, compared to the low level of proof which was used to justify the enormously disruptive school attendance restrictions between 2020 and 2021.

Dr Shona Arora of the UKHSA was asked which protective measures in schools actually worked, and she said:

“We probably don’t know with huge certainty.”

And I don’t quite make the same point that Mr Friedman made about that being a justification for fewer restrictions, but I do say there is a strange disconnect in terms of what we expect from our data.

There’s often talk of waiting for the gold standard of evidence, that is randomised control trials, to show that ventilation and air cleaners work, but that’s never going to come, and that attitude was apparent in Module 3 too: it’s simply the wrong approach. There will never be that evidence in dynamic environments with many confounding factors.

There is sufficient evidence and consensus now for the Inquiry to recommend that clean air is prioritised in schools and that work is done to change the culture of schools to ensure this happens.

Clean air is just as important as healthy school lunches and safe playground equipment. Clean air needs an evangelist like Jamie Oliver was for school lunches.

Chair, we ask you to be that evangelist. This could be the most important thing the Inquiry recommends for public health.

My second point on support. Sir Hamid Patel said that families often faced a moral and emotional dilemma: do you protect your loved ones? Do you comply with attendance rules? And it also places schools in a policy vacuum, expected to enforce attendance while managing real trauma.

Mark Drakeford said yesterday that:

“… if you talked to children at the time, they did not have a view that somehow their rights were being subjugated to the rights of other people, they talked to you all the time about their fear for their grandparents, a fear for their father who worked away, their fear for their sister who had an underlying health condition.”

This was and, for some, remains, a genuine dilemma.

There’s been too much talk about fear and anxiety, as if worrying that Covid might kill you or your vulnerable relative is some kind of pathology, a mental health problem rather than an unaddressed risk to physical health.

And this is why flexibility towards clinically vulnerable families is so important.

How can it work in practice? Lara Wong, CVF’s director, said this:

“… flexibility could mean a number of different things. It might mean … learning remotely … It might mean hybrid learning. And by hybrid learning, I mean in class, to an extent, but maybe in an outdoor classroom. They have things like forest schools for younger children.”

There are many creative solutions.

Sir Hamid Patel gave an important insight into what happened in the schools that he ran. He said:

“Some parents didn’t feel reassured, so we took a risk assessment, we offered them online lessons, and we carried on doing home visits, because those were intergenerational households and … many parents … were clinically vulnerable.”

This local flexibility was in contrast to the overly punitive policy which many clinically vulnerable families reported was in place in England. Families who had entirely legitimate concerns were encouraged to off-roll their children or fined, or prosecuted.

Gillean McCluskey, the Inquiry’s education expert, said:

“It felt as though England, in this particular point, was emphasising a strict and punitive approach, whereas the other three [nations] weren’t. They were talking about the need for understanding, support, flexibility.”

Boris Johnson emphasised the importance of momentum when children were returning to schools in September 2020, but the reality was that in the rush to get all children back to schools, clinically vulnerable families’ legitimate concerns were minimised and this was the wrong approach.

My final point is about status. To properly understand how clinically vulnerable people were and continue to be affected in the education system, they must have status as a district group so that they’re included in decision making, data collection, public reporting and funded research. Recognition should include making clinical vulnerability a protected characteristic in the Equality Act.

There’s a yawning gap in the data and it needs to be filled.

Professor Catherine Davies, the Inquiry’s early years expert, said:

“… we haven’t really mentioned the clinically extremely vulnerable children, whether themselves or members of their family. Those children will have experienced much longer isolation, higher anxiety, a lack of specific guidance.

“… I would really welcome and encourage more data tracking, more advocacy for those groups of what is quite a specific set of circumstances during the pandemic.”

We ask that this is a recommendation in this module but we will also be making submissions in the Module 10 preliminary hearing about how the Inquiry can itself start to plug some of the gaps.

In conclusion, there are no easy answers to the issues identified in this module. It can seem sometimes that there are less answers and more dilemmas. A number of witnesses said that in the end they were left choosing between one bad decision that was just a bit less bad than another bad decision. But if you focus on safety, support and status, that would go a long way to protecting clinically vulnerable families now and in the future. Thank you.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Wagner.

Ms Hannett. Closing statement on behalf of Long Covid Kids and Long

Covid Kids Scotland by MS HANNETT KC

Ms Hannett: My Lady, I appear on behalf of Long Covid Kids and Long Covid Kids Scotland, assisted by Ms Iengar and instructed by Jane Ryan of Batt Murphy Solicitors.

Our clients embarked on Module 8 wanting answers to why their children are unwell, why so little was done to help them, and why, even now, the most basic steps have not been taken. The answers to those questions, to the extent they have been provided to the Inquiry, are shameful.

Even after the evidence of paediatric Long Covid was brought to their attention, no one in government took the necessary steps to protect children from developing Long Covid. To the contrary, the existence of paediatric Long Covid was ignored or minimised. Even now, five years since the onset of the pandemic, wholly inadequate steps have been taken to assist children who developed Long Covid.

Those failures constitute an ongoing breach of the government’s duty to place the best interests of children at the heart of their decision making and to respect the human rights of those children and their families.

My Lady, we intend to provide written closing submissions that identify the findings of fact and the recommendations we invite the Inquiry to make. For now, we focus on the following four points: first, the ongoing impact of Long Covid on our clients and their families. This is not controversial. Indeed, the Inquiry has heard numerous accounts that have consistent and depressingly familiar themes.

Our clients’ children did not bounce back after their Covid infection or re-infection. Rather, Covid infection led to PIMS or developed into Long Covid, leading to serious physical ill health and disability. Long Covid has damaged children’s educational attendance and attainment, in some case irreparably.

Children with Long Covid are often unable to enjoy the ordinary activities of childhood. Their parents have become their full-time carers.

I turn second to outline some of the failures I referred to at the outset of these submissions. At no point during the relevant period or since has any governmental body warned parents, children or schools about the existence of, and risks of, Long Covid.

This silence from the then Prime Minister, from the Office of the Chief Medical Officers, from Public Health England, and from the Department for Education constitutes a public health failure, most notably, but not just, in summer 2021, when ministers received advice on several occasions that cases of Long Covid in children would rise rapidly when restrictions were lifted but accepted this as a strategic risk.

A number of the Module 8 witnesses were asked why no public health device has been given. All gave thoroughly unsatisfactory answers.

I start with the then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who failed to refer to paediatric Long Covid in press conferences or public statements in the relevant period, or indeed in his witness statement for Module 8.

In his evidence to the inquiry, he accepted that if the government had advice about the particular risks of Long Covid in children – I interpose to note that by summer 2021 he most certainly did – then the government should have warned parents.

Mr Johnson offered no explanation for the government’s failure to do so. Rather, in evidence that had echoes of the pervasive dismissal of Long Covid in children, Mr Johnson made the bizarre suggestion that the four references to Long Covid in children in the high prevalence paper of the 7 July 2021, were typographical errors meant to refer to adults.

The Chief Medical Officer, Professor Whitty, when asked about the consensus statement issued in August 2020, said that if the CMOs had known at the time what they did nine months later, they would have included information about Long Covid, as that would have been an important and accurate point to add.

When asked subsequently why no statement was put out nine months later in the summer of 2021, Professor Whitty said that there was no need, as Long Covid had been discussed in the media, discussed in other fora, and that most parents would know it exists.

This is, we say, an obviously unsatisfactory response. Parents should not have to piece together information about a serious and novel paediatric disease from various places. They deserve accurate public health advice from a reliable government source.

Similarly, at no point has the Department for Education promulgated guidance for schools on Long Covid, despite initially deciding to do so in the summer of 2021. A change in position that has not been fully explained.

Ms Acland-Hood stated that the DfE do not ordinarily provide guidance to schools on health conditions, but we say the ordinary approach is wholly inadequate in the face of a novel paediatric condition that suddenly, in the space of months, affected the educational attendance and attainment of thousands of children.

The former Secretary of State for Education, Sir Gavin Williamson, appeared to suggest that no advice was provided at the time as it was not possible to give accurate information. He did not explain why it would not have been accurate to share with schools and parents the detailed advice provided to him by DfE officials on 11 May 2021.

Professor Viner, the Chief Scientific Adviser to DfE, confirmed to Ms Dobbin that he agreed with the conclusions of the Long Covid expert report that sets out both the prevalence and impact of Long Covid. He accepted in his oral evidence that he had not provided advice to DfE on Long Covid. Acknowledgement of this omission was, in my submission, reluctantly given, was unexplained and is, on any view, irrational.

My clients now know that at the same time as deciding not to issue guidance to schools, the DfE was referring to material promulgated by Long Covid Kids for parents and schools as misinformation. This allegation is unexplained, as well as being unfair and untrue. It should never have been left to patient advocates to fill the information gap, and when Long Covid Kids did so, desperate at the lack of information available, they now know they were being maligned by the very organisation which had failed in its duty to provide guidance to schools.

In her evidence, Ms McFarland stated that “We had tried so hard to raise awareness and get people to listen and when I read that, it made me realise that we never stood a chance of getting the truth out because they didn’t want it to be out. The misinformation was hiding the facts from families.”

The government’s approach is reflected in the evidence of Professor Turner, Professor of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, he did not once refer to Long Covid in his oral evidence, and indeed, in our submission, his evidence was unnuanced and cavalier, dismissive of the physical harm to children caused by the virus, describing it as having bounced off children. We say RCPCH failed, along with the OCMO and PHE to offer any acknowledgement let alone leadership on paediatric Long Covid.

The college appears to have taken no steps whatsoever to ensure children are correctly diagnosed with Long Covid or that they receive appropriate healthcare.

This collective failure to warn about the potential physical harm to children had real world consequences. It is simply wrong to say, as Professor Whitty did, that a warning would have made no difference to the way people behaved. Quite apart from being entitled to accurate public health information, parents would have been able to make an informed risk assessment including, for example, about vaccination.

The silence contributed to the ongoing lack of knowledge amongst healthcare providers and a consequential failure to diagnose Long Covid and to provide support. Schools continued to put in place reasonable adjustments such as flexible and hybrid learning, steps which the Inquiry’s expert, Professor McCluskey, has described as fair, reasonable, and necessary.

Third, my Lady, why was there such total inaction? No satisfactory answer has been given to the Inquiry. Doing the best that we can, it appears that overwhelming weight was placed on reassuring parents that schools were safe for children to the exclusion of identifying the real risk of physical harm.

The likely rise in cases of Long Covid amongst children and young people following the removal of Covid restrictions was accepted as a strategic risk by, for example, cabinet office in the Scottish Government, but this was not an inevitable or a necessary trade-off. There could, and should, have been an approach to reopening schools that maximise their safety through the effective use of NPIs, proper ventilation, and public health messaging.

Instead, decision makers in all four governments knowingly left children and their families uninformed and unprotected from the real risk of developing Long Covid, and indeed, for those children who already had Long Covid, of reinfection.

My clients emphasise that Long Covid remains a roulette. Any child infected by SARS-CoV-2 can develop it.

Fourth and finally, in the face of all of those failures, where are we now? The current and shameful position is that measures in place either to minimise the risk of children developing Long Covid in the first place or to help those children who have Long Covid, are non-existent or obviously inadequate.

There is still no public health messaging on the risk of Long Covid for children and young people from any of the governments of the four nations. There remains no specific guidance to schools on how to support children with Long Covid to access education safely. Despite Professor Noakes’ evidence that ventilation and air cleaners are effective in schools for reducing the transmission of Covid as well as other respiratory viruses, the government fails to prioritise clean air for schools.

There is no ongoing data collection on Long Covid in children, either in terms of national prevalence or school absences due to Long Covid.

Long Covid’s impact on educational attendance and attainment is therefore neither understood nor being responded to. Healthcare for children and young people with Long Covid remains hopelessly inadequate. There were no dedicated Long Covid services for children and young people in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland during the relevant period. Many specialist services in England have been closed and several more are closing.

Children and their families are still forced to seek expensive private healthcare. As a result, the burden remains on the families of profoundly ill children to seek the necessary change.

In conclusion, my Lady, we express our sincere thanks to the Inquiry legal team for their considerable assistance in this module, and to the Inquiry staff more broadly for the very smooth conduct of the hearings. My clients look forward to assisting the Inquiry further in due course by the provision of their written closing submissions.

Lady Hallett: Very grateful, Ms Hannett, thank you very

much indeed.

Now, Ms Anyadike-Danes, do you want to take us up to

the lunch break? Closing statement on behalf of Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People by MS ANYADIKE-DANES KC

Ms Anyadike-Danes: Yes, thank you very much indeed,

my Lady.

And actually, where my learned friend left off is

where I would like to start, with my thanks to you and

your team, not just for having a module that is solely

dedicated to the very diverse ways in which children

were affected and is hard to have listened, sometimes,

to just the extent and depth of that, but also to have

assisted us in helping you to provide the information to

you. So thank you very much.

My Lady, our oral submissions are structured around

children and young people in relation to two matters:

firstly, and in their own words, a description of what

they went through and the continuing impact on them, and

secondly, what they still did not know but wanted to

find out.

We are going to provide written closing submissions

and they will include proposals for recommendations but

what I want to do now is actually to return to the views of the children and young people, and they’ve had an opportunity to consider the evidence over this past rather intense four weeks. So if I start off with what they wanted to know.

Children and young people feel as though they’ve been waiting for over five years for answers. Their queries were summarised into six areas, and whilst they can more readily see what went wrong, they are left with no real understanding about why.

And if I take those six areas in turn.

Why were they not made an integral part of any pre-pandemic plan?

Well, it’s hard to see how that could have happened in relation, for example, to school closures, when there was no real pre-pandemic plan developed by the department or, for that matter, anybody else. The Permanent Secretary for Education was himself not aware of any contingency planning and guidance and in those circumstances it’s hard to see how he could have involved the children.

Secondly, why were those who had particular knowledge of their circumstances not properly consulted or involved in planning?

Well, as I’ve said the reality is that there just was no proper planning, and if we take the school closures, actually, as an example, the department was entirely focused on keeping schools open, until they weren’t open, and whilst it engaged with stakeholders before the second round and considered itself to be in pretty good shape, that confidence may have been misplaced, as inexplicably, neither the Commissioner for Children nor children’s rights organisations were actually involved in that.

Third, why was no real consideration given to how some of the most dramatic of measures, such as lockdowns and school closures, would impact them? The fact is that they weren’t really thinking about the impact of those measures on children and young people at all.

To the extent that children and young people were considered, it was far more in terms of the calculation of their likely contribution to reducing the R number, and not really about avoiding or minimising harms to them.

Fourth, why did the plans fail to include adequate mitigating measures? It was recognised that government policies and measures were knowingly causing huge harm to children and young people, and that they were paying a huge price to protect the rest of society.

Now, that should have led to such measures being developed. That is, mitigations. But it didn’t. And there have been no – there have been no proper explanation for such an egregious failing. To have recognised that you are intentionally doing something that is likely to cause harm, recognise that it is causing harm, and yet not having done the work to put into a mitigation or a reduction of those harms is simply inexplicable. And has not been explained.

Five, what coordinated work is being done now by the government to identify the full impact on them and what is now in place to help them?

There is no overall coordinated activity being done to identify and tackle the range of adverse impacts on children and young people. Nor does such work appear to have been implemented. It’s not even clear that there is the data to know exactly who has been affected and how. And without that, it’s difficult to see how there can be any effective recovery plans to help them.

Sixth, and finally, what’s being done now to improve planning, and how will children be involved?

The Department of Education claims to be working with all of its arms-length bodies to set up a strategic steering group on emergency planning so that it is better placed to respond to such emergencies.

Which sounds good.

However, despite all of the experience of the pandemic, to date, none of that has involved the commissioner or children and young people.

So perhaps the reason for such deficiencies is best understood by the Department of Education’s own attitude to lessons learnt. What they said was: there have been no formal lessons learned exercise commissioned, as the initial decision to close schools and a lot of the other decisions around societal impacts were driven by the Executive, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health, and the Department of Education had to react to those, rather than implement what it considered to be its own decisions.

Now, my Lady, we say that’s just a long way round of saying that: Any lessons learnt were for others to learn; they weren’t our decisions so others need to learn those lessons.

The Inquiry was told that if the statement were to be written again, the language would be more nuanced. There’s no suggestion that that nuancing would change the essential point.

So if I turn now to the important bit of all of this, which is the children and young people’s views.

Their views, actually, can overall be summed up perhaps by the words of Professor Turner, when he said:

“I think that the message I would be keen to get across is that there was – before the pandemic, during the pandemic and after the pandemic, there has not been equity. Children are not treated equally in our society. It is a defining characteristic against which we should not prejudice, but children do not get the best in this country. They’re 25% of the population and they get 11% of the NHS spend. They rarely ever seem to feature in decision making.”

But let’s use the children’s own words. So Elodie, who was 10 years old at the start of the pandemic, and who, my Lady, you heard when I had my opening submissions:

[As read] “The Inquiry has provided unequivocal responses to the first four questions. We have been answered in the most hurtful manner possible. We, as children, realise that we were simply not considered individually or even as a group in decision making. No proper consultation was carried out in relation to the entirely foreseeable impact of the closure of schools. It is shocking that the Children’s Commissioner did not even get a seat at the table to advocate for or to protect me and the countless others who were adversely affected.

“There is not one child who hasn’t been affected, and the mid-to long-term impacts of Covid are a generational guessing game. Mental issues such as anxiety and depression affecting young adults and children have risen and school attendance has fallen. The entirely reactive approach taken has led to a diminution in the fundamental respect for education and schooling in Northern Ireland. These are outcomes that will spill over into our adulthood and futures.

“Hope only can be found through genuine responses to our final two questions. It’s my wish that steps are taken to immediately and robustly assess the current impacts of Covid on all young people, and for the government to respond swiftly and decisively to attempt to mitigate against the damage that they have done. Our voices need to be represented at a national level with a dedicated Children’s Commissioner.

“I do believe in the power of rights and laws to protect us. The UNCRC must now immediately be enshrined in our domestic law to protect us in the future. That would not be a fairytale ending, as the spectre of Covid remains a reality, but it would give hope to us, as young people of Northern Ireland, in that we have been seen, if not also heard.”

Ciaran(?), 13 years at the start of the pandemic:

[As read] “I have been left with more questions than answers. The evidence provided showed an Executive unprepared. Officials were not psychologically or physically prepared, and reacting seems to have been – become the way the pandemic was then handled going forward. Sadly, it doesn’t seem like there have been any lessons learned, for now or the future. And according to Derek Baker’s written statement, there have been no formal lessons learned, exercises commissioned.

“There seems to have been a lot of focus in the Inquiry on education attainment. Less said about the wellbeing of students. There should have been and still needs to be a focus on the mental health of young people. We have been poorly informed of the risks of Covid infection and how airborne infections spread. Everyone, especially schools, should be given appropriate advice. The government should also be prepared for all types of pandemics and provide leadership.

“This module hasn’t adequately considered how failing to make schools, healthcare, and public spaces safer has impacted children. My sister Molly was 8 at the start of the pandemic and is now 13 and still extremely vulnerable. Outside of my family, who’s protecting her?”

Nicky, not her real name, 13 years old at the start of the pandemic:

[As read] “An issue I don’t feel was particularly addressed that should have been was children and young people’s voices not being heard, and not being particularly considered in decision making. One effective step I believe should be taken to help ensure children’s best interests are at the heart of future decision making is the incorporation of the UNCRC into domestic law in England and Northern Ireland, as has already been done in Scotland.”

So, my Lady, to conclude, the evidence is replete with the right questions having been recognised, albeit often refrained, but when one looks for the answer, the evidence often seems to lose focus and dribbles away, lost in qualifications, irrelevant explanations, and bureaucratic speech that says much but conveys little. Often at the end of it all, you’re not particularly any the wiser, there’s some flat denials, some don’t knows, not the right person, I’ll have to get back to you. And all of that is extremely hard for children and young people to take, who believed, with the focus of the module being on them, and given that we are now five years away from the pandemic, that they would finally get proper answers, and perhaps even apologies. And yet they are left without that, and a feeling that no one has taken responsibility or is likely to be held accountable for the harm inflicted on them, which in many cases was intentional harm, at least knowing that it would cause harm. More importantly, without the comfort of knowing that there should have been – that, should there be another pandemic, their experience or those of their loved ones would be markedly any better.

Again, they look to the report on this module to provide the information they lack. And in terms of going forward, they look to the Inquiry to make recommendations to provide some measure of reassurance for the future.

Thank you very much, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you, Ms Anyadike-Danes.

I shall return now and break for lunch and return at 1.55.

(12.54 pm)

(The Short Adjournment)

(1.55 pm)

Lady Hallett: Ms Dobbin.

Ms Dobbin: My Lady, can I just check that you can see and hear us.

Lady Hallett: I can, thank you.

Mr Gardner, I think you’re going next. Closing Statement on behalf of Children’s Commissioner for

Wales by MR GARDNER

Mr Gardner: Good afternoon, my Lady.

I appear on behalf of the Children’s Commissioner for Wales and the commissioner thanks the Inquiry again for allocating her Core Participant status in this important module.

My Lady, the pandemic had an immediate and, on the whole, detrimental impact on all children and young people in Wales and across the UK. The disadvantage gap caused by race, poverty, and disability in children became more pronounced.

Vulnerable children who were at risk in their home lost the protective environment of the school. Children lost access to basic freedoms, basic human rights, and activities, and we are seeing a longer-term adverse impact on children’s confidence, school attendance, and mental health since the pandemic.

This all appeared obvious before this module began, but this Inquiry has heard evidence that shows this unequivocally true.

It must also be recognised that the pandemic greatly exacerbated an already unacceptable state of affairs. An inadequate and inconsistent children’s rights framework across the UK combined with long-term underfunding of children’s services leading up towards the pandemic greatly contributed to the adverse impacts on children.

My Lady, the Inquiry has hearing evidence from the commissioner today on the Welsh legislation which should, if properly applied, bring children’s rights to the centre of decision making in Wales.

The commissioner would, in particular, highlight that in accordance with Article 3 of the UNCRC, the best interests of children must be a primary consideration in decision making, and in accordance with Article 12 children and young people have the right to be asked and heard on their views about decisions which affect them.

Applying the Rights of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure 2011, the Welsh ministers must have due regard to these rights and all UNCRC principles in the decisions that they make.

In order to ensure that the rights and voices of children are considered, the commissioner recommends to the Inquiry the effective and timely use of children’s rights impact investments, or CRIAs, as standalone assessments, not simply part of integrated impact assessments.

In Wales, CRIAs are required by any decisions taken by the Welsh Government as a result of the children’s right scheme 2021 and its predecessor, the 2014 scheme.

My Lady, when decision makers in Wales took the rights of children into account they made better decisions during the pandemic.

There are many examples of positive liaison between the commissioner’s office and the Welsh Government, and there is a culture of consultation in Wales reflected in the operation of the Shadow Social Partnership Council. This not, however, the full story.

The commissioner cautions the Inquiry to be wary of a conclusion that the grass was always greener in Wales. On occasion, and in particular at the outset of the pandemic, the arrangements to protect children and to facilitate children’s rights in Wales were not sufficiently well prepared or able to stand up to the stresses that came with the pandemic.

As the commissioner said in her evidence, was sufficient due regard placed on children’s best interests? And we say it was not.

The breakdown in the legal framework and failures in observance of children’s rights is strongly illustrated in the first school closures in March 2020. When the decision to close schools in Wales was taken on 18 March 2020, little to no planning had taken place to prepare local authorities, schools, parents, social workers, or children.

There is evidence from Sharon Powell, of Powys Council, that some local authorities got three hours notice of those decisions to close schools, and they had no contingency plan in place for the pandemic.

The Welsh Government, to its credit, accepts that, despite knowledge of the potential for school closures from February 2020, it did not plan well enough or early enough.

The lack of insight and planning meant that when it became apparent that schools may have to close, decision making was rushed, and as a result no ministerial or legal advice was taken. The decision communicated to the public, which was on its face a clear decision to close schools, was taken when the Welsh ministers had no power to do so. No regard was had for UNCRC, the commissioner was not consulted, no CRIA was undertaken. And as a result, some children were left vulnerable.

As the Education Minister noted in her statement, consultation in CRIAs may not have changed the decision to close schools, but that misses the point. They would have informed on how to close schools and invited consideration of how to keep specific groups of children safe. They may have spurred on the very action that the minister states in her statement she would, with hindsight, have taken, such as data collection on vulnerable children and the need for support, food, and remote learning facilities.

This was a point quite properly accepted by Mr Drakeford yesterday in his oral evidence, when he said, when asked if a CRIA should be undertaken:

“There would undoubtedly have been direct benefits … had we had been able to do so …”

The failure of process was to the detriment of the children of Wales.

The commissioner hears what the Welsh Government says about the pace of change and the need for expeditious decisions, meaning that these processes were not followed. There are two points in reply.

Firstly, earlier planning would have avoided the need for such expeditious decision making.

Secondly, existing legal duties, designed to improve policymaking, must be respected and followed rather than being abandoned as being too difficult to achieve.

The system must stand up to stress or it is an ineffective system.

But, my Lady, what as to the next steps? As Kate Anstey of Child Poverty Action Group said in her oral evidence, to protect inside a pandemic, we must protect outside a pandemic.

And as Sir Jon Coles said in his oral evidence:

“Young people have played their part … Society owes them a debt …”

The Inquiry may ask: how do we protect? How do we repay the debt? The answer, the commissioner submits, is that we must truly learn the lessons of this pandemic, including the impacts that could be mitigated by better institutional machinery, to use Mr Drakeford’s phrase from yesterday.

A lesson from this Inquiry is that we must better prepare for the potential future school closures as part of civil contingency planning measures. This must take a children’s rights based approach and have multi-agency input and intergovernmental engagement.

It is also important that we recognise social workers as part of the critical infrastructure which keeps children safe and makes social workers part of the emergency planning systems.

My Lady, to repay the debt, as the commissioner has said in evidence today, there must also be a properly-resourced recovery plan for children.

My Lady, the commissioner respectfully agrees with the host of witnesses advocating for a stronger statutory child’s rights approach to decision making. A child’s rights approach does form part of the legal landscape in Wales and when this framework is used well, it leads to better decisions.

The commissioner also recognises, and recommends to the Inquiry the approach in Scotland which has gone further than Wales in directly incorporating the UNCRC into Scottish law.

My Lady, the commissioner also respectfully agrees with the host of witnesses advocating for greater requirements to consult the commissioners and improve systems and mechanisms which go beyond lip service to engage with the voices of children.

The commissioner has highlighted the negative impact of her not being consulted for school closures. This could be contrasted with scenarios where there was consultation and where better decisions for children were made, for example when the much criticised regime of proposing SEN easements was brought in in England but not in Wales, which was part due to the consultation with the commissioner.

And when the commissioner invited a rights-based analysis for the proposed firebreak lockdown which led to a cabinet briefing note setting out the considerations and mitigation measures, and which in turn led to better decisions, balancing harms, and meaning that primary schools would stay open.

The commissioner therefore would recommend that in order to strengthen these frameworks, a statutory duty to consult and have due regard to the view of the commissioner as well as to hear directly from children and young persons in important decisions relating to them.

The commissioner would also recommend a cabinet-level children’s minister in all UK governments to ensure that children have an advocate for their rights at the heart of government.

My Lady, the commissioner also agrees with the large number of witnesses, including Mr Drakeford, who spoke to the need and for the efficacy of CRIAs. CRIAs, when done well, do work. There are a number of examples of good CRIAs which had a positive impact for children.

One example can be found in the CRIA on alert levels and restrictions dated 21 December 2020. There, the rights-based approach informed by the CRIA, arguably led the Welsh Government to a different decision on social distancing, informed by children and which allowed them greater freedoms.

I would pause at this point, my Lady, to note that in his evidence yesterday Mr Drakeford suggested that CRIAs are business as usual. The experience of the commissioner is that even today, that is not the case, and in her written evidence, has provided recent examples of decisions which lacked consultation and lacked a CRIA, long past the pandemic. The implementation gap does persist and these continuing failures must, it is submitted, be addressed by stronger and clearer statutory duties on the status of the UNCRC, the need for meaningful consultation, and engagement with children and young people, and a statutory requirement to consult and give due regard to the commissioner’s views in any future pandemic and national emergency.

My Lady, to conclude, there’s much to be admired in Wales and its legal policy and framework which is intended to protect children’s rights, as well as in the openness of the Welsh Government to consultation and discussion. This said, had the legal and policy duties been fully and properly followed in Wales, the worst impact of the pandemic on children and young people would very likely have been mitigated. Had those protections been stronger such as by direct incorporation, the impact across Wales may have been mitigated even further.

My Lady, the commissioner thanks the Inquiry once again for the Inquiry’s time and indeed thanks to the Inquiry team for its assistance throughout these past four weeks. I’m very grateful.

Lady Hallett: Thank you for your assistance, Mr Gardner. Very grateful.

Mr Jacobs. Closing statement on behalf of Trades Union Congress by

Mr Jacobs

Mr Jacobs: My Lady, in our opening submissions on behalf of the Trades Union Congress we suggested that the analysis within this module had to be set alongside the perspectives of earlier modules.

We suggested that identifying the weight of interests in play is important but that the real challenge which the Inquiry must illuminate is how best to chart a course through. And we suggested that the single greatest determinant of the impact of the next pandemic upon children and young people will be the effectiveness of the overall pandemic response across society.

My Lady, that all went to a central point: that to be meaningful, the findings and recommendations of this module must be properly set in the epidemiological realties of a pandemic.

What we say that means is as follows: first, there should be caution in minimising the potential role of restricting attendance at schools. Sir Gavin Williamson is a lone voice who suggests that the January 2021 closures were unnecessary, that safety measures in schools were sufficient, that the NHS would not have been overwhelmed.

The Secretary of State for Education at the time, making that argument, without articulating any realistic rationale, is unconscionable, because it wrongly tells children that their sacrifices in early 2021 serve no purpose.

Similarly, qualifying the significance of school-related transmission whether by considering the effectiveness of school closures as an isolated measure, which they are not, or by an artificial distinction between direct and indirect effects of closures upon transmission misses the real issue. The issue is whether restricting attendance is necessary in order to get the R rates below 1. To take Professor Whitty’s phrase: are you content for the pandemic to carry on doubling?

Professor Viner gave some evidence on this issue. He made various observations about uncertainties of evidence and of transmission in schools being assumed when evidence was limited. We confess to finding it difficult to follow the thread of where his observations led. He accepted entirely that schools were places of transmission, that closures suppressed transmission and that the closures, both in March 2020 and January 2021, were necessary. When out in the wash, his evidence just concurs with the SAGE advice of the time.

Second, on the timing of school closures the position should be to avoid them if at all possible but to avoid recommendations that state or imply that that important imperative means closing schools at the last possible moment.

In a future pandemic, the very opposite may be necessary, whether to protect children and staff or to aim for avoiding harsher restrictions in the long run.

Third, set against the harsh epidemiological realities, the importance of ventilation and air quality reveals itself. My Lady, we wholeheartedly endorse the submissions made before the adjournment on behalf of the Clinically Vulnerable Families.

The apparent cause for caution on the issue is the evidential uncertainty as to quantifying the precise impact on transmission in the school setting but that is to hold ventilation to a curiously and uniquely high standard amongst NPIs.

As Dr Arora and Professor Noakes made clear, there is clear evidence from other settings that ventilation is an effective tool, and no reason to believe that air cleaning would be any different in terms of its effect on pathogens in schools.

Professor Noakes is confident that the Class-ACT Study in Bradford demonstrates that air cleaning units in classrooms can create substantial reductions in illness-related absence.

And consider some of the powerful reasons in favour. It will bring benefits outside of a pandemic: it will reduce missed days of school and improve concentration levels for children.

It is also particularly important, given the difficulty of some other NPIs in schools. As we have heard, schools are some of the most densely populated indoor spaces in society. Education involves being in classrooms, in high classroom numbers, for long periods of time. Social distancing can be a challenge in that setting. The staff and pupil population who deserve a safe environment, and who deserve an education, will include those who are clinically vulnerable.

Yet standards of ventilation in many schools are uniquely poor. Worse still, schools in disadvantaged areas typically have the poorest infrastructure.

And consider, my Lady, a next pandemic in which children are at comparatively higher risk and school closures are less a matter of suppressing community transmission and more a matter of concern for the physical safety of children and young people.

Safety of schools should be a determinative factor in the length of closures. Imagine, in that context, what would appear to be the absurdity of not having learned the lessons on ventilation.

Fourth, the importance of contingency planning. The ‘no plan B’ approach was utterly wrong. Mr Johnson suggested that it only related to school closures. That too is wrong. The 6 August 2020 paper drafted by Department for Education officials was entirely sensible. It looked at an array of measures, including rotated attendance – which, in the event, was never properly considered – localised restrictions, and the role of test and trace.

It considered a framework for decision making that was to be shared with the sector and would be known to children and young people. It was rejected, it appears, by Sir Gavin and Mr Johnson. It was an appalling way to treat those in education and a recipe for chaos that followed.

We are also conscious, my Lady, that one vein of inquiry has been the input of education unions. The position of the NEU has been a focus, but the Inquiry’s questioning of Mr Courtney did not engage with the national policy position of the NEU, instead focusing on an exchange of correspondence between local NEU representatives and Sir Jon Coles.

As we showed Sir Gavin Williamson, in August 2020 the NEU supported reopening. It provided reassurance to its members that increased transmission following early reopening was modest, and it sought contingency planning. That was entirely reasonable.

We would also observe, my Lady, that the letter written by those local NEU representatives, contrary to Sir Jon Coles’s characterisation of it, primarily focused on the question of school attendance and community transmission.

Read today, the views expressed are cogent, even more so given the letter was reason in May 2020.

Undeniably there is a pithy clarity to the observations made by Sir Jon Coles about school attendance and all moving on to a new normal. But might we suggest that his observations underplay some of the difficult realities and uncertainties of the time.

It is right that, at times, unions were voices of caution. That was for entirely appropriate reasons. The curious feature of this module approach is that such caution may jar in the context of this module. We suggest that in Module 2 it simply would have chimed with the concerns raised as to how we came to suffer such terrible loss of life.

There is obvious complexity to these issues, as my Lady observed this morning, and we are confident the Inquiry will not fall into a facile characterisation of any view pointing towards the epidemiological benefits of closures as being necessarily reached in ignorance of the interests of children.

It may well be, in the course of a fraught pandemic, that views expressed at certain points withstand the calm light of time less well than others, but to extrapolate from that some principled problem or conflict is wrong. As Mr Drakeford observed, he never believed that the education unions ever came thorough his door not alerted to the needs of the children that they were working so hard to serve. And my Lady, he was right.

We are grateful for the undoubtedly huge efforts of you and your Inquiry team, and for the opportunity to contribute towards this module.

Thank you.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Jacobs, as helpful as ever.

Ms Bicarregui (inaudible) I’m so sorry. Closing statement on behalf of the Welsh Government by

Ms Bicarregui

Ms Bicarregui: Not at all, my Lady, thank you.

I will be brief. The Welsh Government will be submitting a written closing statement which will engage in detail with the evidence and the recommendations which have emerged during the hearings and which are contained in the significant body of evidence that your team has gathered.

Four weeks ago, at the start of this module, I referred to the unique legal framework for children’s rights in Wales at the time of the pandemic, the Welsh Government having formally adopted the UNCRC as the basis for the policymaking relating to children and young people as early as 2004, and from 2012, of course, introducing the Rights of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure 2011, placing a duty on Welsh ministers to have due regard to children’s rights in all their actions and decisions.

And I accepted at that point, my Lady, that you and your team would be considering whether the legal framework had in fact made any difference to how children and young people’s rights were considered and protected during the pandemic.

My Lady, the Welsh Government submits that the evidence taken as a whole – and, my Lady, we’re certainly not suggesting perfection here – quite on the contrary, as you would heard from Mr Drakeford’s evidence yesterday – but the evidence as a whole suggests that the legal framework in Wales and the regular consultation with organisations whose duty it is to support children, including the Children’s Commissioner for Wales, did result in decision making which considered the rights of children and young people during the pandemic.

In some cases, this led to different decisions being taken in Wales compared to the rest of the UK, and, in other cases, similar decisions being taken but, in the Welsh case, the government having considered the implications for children and young people carefully, substantively, and thought about mitigations.

As Mark Drakeford vividly described in evidence, when asked whether children’s rights were considered, he said:

“… it’s part of our culture to be thinking about these things. We don’t rely simply on there being a document produced. It’s part of the way we do our business … the absence of a written document should not be taken as meaning that those involved in the decisions had no regard for the obligations we are under.”

It was put to Mr Drakeford that some Core Participants considered that the due regard duties of Welsh ministers were not fully and properly followed by the Welsh Government throughout the pandemic and in response, my Lady will recall that he said that he could point to very direct practical examples from early on, I think he described April 2020, and throughout the pandemic, where the perspective of the UNCRC children’s rights measure made a genuine difference to the decisions the government was making.

My Lady, some examples were given yesterday, but in our written submissions, we will set out a comprehensive list that we say – where we say this made a difference throughout the pandemic.

My Lady, just to touch on full incorporation of the UNCRC as advocated by some Core Participants, there is a level of complexity to this which we’ll touch on in our written submissions. The full incorporation cannot be achieved by the Welsh Government alone, because, of course, as you know, it can only legislate in respect of its own devolved powers, and there are other complexities where they don’t have the same devolved powers as the Scottish Government, for example.

So full incorporation across all articles and across all sectors would, in our submission, require constitutional reform or, probably better, UK-wide legislation on this matter.

My Lady, the Welsh Government joins with the Children’s Commissioner for Wales in commending to the Inquiry the social partnership model which during the pandemic included the Shadow Social Partnership Council. This was an invaluable means of listening to other voices and perspectives, including representatives for children and young people, before decisions were taken.

The Welsh Government considers that good decision making needs challenge, needs different perspectives and critical friends, some of whom are in this room, particularly when those decisions need to be made quickly. And in that spirit, our written closing submissions will engage in detail with the specific concerns of the Children’s Commissioner for Wales, and the recommendations she suggests, as well as those of other Core Participants.

My Lady, the Welsh Government asks the Inquiry to consider the recommendation of Heather Payne who is Senior Medical Officer in the Welsh Government. She recommends the establishment of an overarching multi-agency children’s advisory group to advise on the potential impacts of any restrictions in response to a health emergency on children and young people, including the impact on maternity care, and that group, my Lady, would include third sector organisations to ensure that the voices of children and young people are heard.

My Lady, I think this has some of the features of the machinery of government to focus on children’s rights during an emergency which Mr Drakeford touched on yesterday.

My Lady, although we’ve heard conflicting views over the last four weeks, and there have been criticisms, there have been concessions, there is a degree of complexity in respect of balancing children and young people’s rights and needs to the extent that they do conflict with public health imperatives at different points of the pandemic, it does appear that a consensus is emerging, perhaps I would be on safer ground, my Lady, to say a weight of evidence is emerging, in three respects: planning for the next pandemic needs to include robust plans for remote learning if it becomes necessary, with careful thought given sufficiently in advance to the needs of disabled children and young people, children and young people with special educational needs, and vulnerable children, and all governments should be doing this now.

The effects of the pandemic are enduring for children and young people, and will persist if they’re not tackled. They didn’t end in May 2022. All governments need to continue to focus on all those children and young people, so from those born in 2020 through to those who were touching adulthood in 2020, who continue to be impacted by the pandemic. And thirdly, the pandemic-aggravated inequalities in society, health inequalities, educational inequalities, socioeconomic inequalities, and addressing systemic inequalities is the most useful preparation for a future pandemic.

My Lady, these four weeks have provided the Welsh Government with a great deal to consider. We thank you and your team, and we thank all of those who provided evidence, some of those obviously at personal cost.

My Lady the Welsh Government has asked me not to thank the children and young people of Wales and all of the dedicated professionals who work with them again, as I did at the beginning of these hearings. Instead, my Lady, I’m asked to promise them that the evidence from this module will be used by the Welsh Government to make tangible changes. Diolch.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, I’m very grateful.

Ms Drysdale. Closing statement on behalf of the Scottish Government by MS

Drysdale KC

Ms Drysdale: Good afternoon, my Lady. I appear on behalf of the Scottish Government with Iain Halliday, and Amelia Mah.

The Scottish Government agrees with Professor Davies that children need to be considered in social policy and they should be thought about differently. In light of that, the Scottish Government welcomes the Inquiry’s investigation of the impact of the pandemic on children and young people, in Module 8, as part of its commitment to promoting and embedding children’s rights.

The Scottish Government wishes to assist the Chair in considering where support could be put in place to mitigate the impacts of the next pandemic and to protect children and young people in the future.

In this closing statement, I will address four themes: school closures, foreseeability, recovery, and children’s rights.

Turning to the first theme, school closures. The Scottish Government has ultimate responsibility for the education and safety of children in Scotland, but operational delivery is dependent on the actions of local authorities, in accordance with statute. As highlighted by First Minister John Swinney in his evidence, the Scottish Government had no legal power to close schools and this was done by agreement on 18 March 2020. Partnership was essential. Time was invested by the Scottish Government in creating a collaborative environment with local authorities in early 2020 to ensure that if it became necessary to close schools, there would be a broad consensus that this was appropriate.

The Inquiry has heard evidence from COSLA that a lot of information was communicated to local authorities by the Scottish Government. They were not kept at arm’s length. One of the key strengths of the Scottish Government was partnership working, and there was a collective effort within the government itself. As Mr Swinney was both the Cabinet Secretary for Education and deputy First Minister, he was well placed to ensure a coordinated approach across government departments which put the interests of children and young people at the heart of decision making.

The Scottish Government accepts that, on reflection, it ought to have focused more on planning for school closures in early 2020, rather than primarily focusing on the sustainability of the education sector. It also acknowledges that in March 2020, the decision to close schools to the majority of children and young people had a significant impact on them. The decisions taken reflected the pace of developments with the virus and the circumstances and understanding at the time.

In the second period of school closures in 2021, the Scottish Government took a different approach. It had learned lessons from the first lockdown. It took a phased approach informed by scientific advice. By January 2021, significant progress had been made in developing remote learning infrastructure.

Given the evidence that transmission and infection were lowest amongst the youngest children, early learning and childcare settings, and those in primary 1 to primary 3 returned to school first alongside vulnerable children and selected senior phase learners working towards their exams.

The Scottish Government also learned from the experience of exam cancellation in 2020. At the time it respected the independence of judgement of the Scottish Qualifications Authority which certificated exams as an external body. It had commissioned the SQA to undertake an alternative certification model. It recognised that approaches were taken which caused uncertainty and anxiety for learners, and accepted the findings of the Priestley review.

An apology was offered direct to pupils and it rectified the situation.

In 2021, following consultation with young people to hear their views, the 2021 exam diet was cancelled. It was announced that an ACM would be used, taking into account the Priestley recommendations. The SQA is currently being replaced by Qualifications Scotland as part of work on an education reform to take account of challenges following the pandemic, and to consolidate a change in practice and culture.

Moving to the second theme, my Lady, foreseeability. The Scottish Government recognises that school closures had an impact on all children. It was taking decisions on a prospective basis and it’s potentially problematic to judge that retrospectively. The Scottish Government accepts that the educational impact and potential damage to the wellbeing of children from school closures were foreseeable but closures of scale and length which occurred were unforeseeable and unprecedented, as was the cancellation of exams.

The Scottish Government accepts that there should have been more preparation, planning and guidance for school closures in early 2020. Before making the decision to close schools, the Scottish Government did not know that the UK Government would later introduce the furlough scheme, which was not announced until afterwards, and it was concerned about closing schools when parents had to go to work. Education was not operating in a compartment of its own but in the wider sector of public policy.

The initial school closures in March 2020 were carried out as an emergency measure on the advice of SAGE. There were few harm-free decisions open to decision makers, who were operating in an unknown environment, without full scientific knowledge of the risks from the virus.

Most decision makers were deeply committed public servants doing their best, but facing what Mrs Ford referred to as “lose-lose situations”.

Once the initial decision had been taken to close schools, the Scottish Government took action to assess the wider impact of pandemic restrictions. It carried out a retrospective impact assessment on the closure and reopening of schools in July 2020, an approach Professor Turner recommended.

The Children’s Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment recognised both the general negative impact on the learning and wellbeing of children and young people of closure, and the differential impacts on vulnerable and at-risk groups.

Moving to the third theme: recovery. The Scottish Government was acutely aware of the range and depth of impacts of the closure of schools. The need for a recovery strategy to mitigate and redress the negative impact on learning development was clear. But the Scottish Government did not adopt a narrow approach focused exclusively on learning; it recognised that a whole-systems approach was necessary.

When reopening schools, the Scottish Government advised schools not to mandate attendance, acknowledging that parents and learners may be concerned about the return to school.

On 17 December 2020, the Scottish Government published the 2021 national education improvement plan, which set out the priorities for Scottish education. In January 2021, the Scottish Government and Education Scotland jointly published an equity audit on the impact on children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

A number of financial and practical measures were put in place to support education recovery.

Significant efforts are being made in order to assist children and young people to recover from the impacts of the pandemic. It is recognised that there is further work to be done, and the Scottish Government remains committed to addressing the impact of the pandemic.

Turning to the final theme, children’s rights. The Scottish Government agrees with Dr Delgado that we should involve children and young people in the design of research on mitigation measures or interventions.

The Scottish Government has reflected on the impact of the pandemic on children and, since then, has strengthened their rights by directly incorporating the UNCRC into domestic law, within the limits of devolved competence.

This was done to deliver a proactive culture of everyday accountability for children’s rights across public services in Scotland. The Scottish Government has had a national play strategy since 2013, which recognises that play supports children’s rights and wellbeing. It also has a national approach and framework for children in the form of ‘Getting it right for every child’, GIRFEC. This is Scotland’s longstanding national commitment to provide all children and their families with the right support at the right time. The rights-based holistic approach lies at the heart of all policies impacting children.

My Lady, in conclusion, the Scottish Government has listened to all the evidence in the Module 8 hearings and recognises that there are lessons to be learned. It welcomes the recruits of the Inquiry and recommendations from the Chair in order to mitigate the impact of any future pandemic on children and young people, to the extent that it is possible to do so.

It accepts the importance of engagement with all groups across society in preparation for the next pandemic, and tackling health inequalities, including child poverty.

It also recognises that more could have been done to listen to the voices of children and young people during the pandemic, including those groups who are seldom heard.

Following incorporation of the UNCRC, the Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that the voices of children and young people are central to decision making. It agrees with Dr Delgado that listening to the voices of children and young people and families and organisations representing them is key.

Thank you, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, Ms Drysdale.

Ms Ward. Closing statement of behalf of the Department for Education

by MS WARD KC

Ms Ward: My Lady.

The Department for Education has listened, both to its representatives in this room, and the many others who are following online and receiving daily updates. It has listened with interest, with care and with concern to all of the evidence that has been presented to you in this module.

I don’t need, in these closing submissions, to rehearse that evidence. The pandemic’s impacts on children are at the forefront not just of the department’s approach to the Inquiry and its preparation for any future pandemic or similar emergency, but fundamentally to the work the department is doing every day to ensure that services for children and young people address the needs they have now, whether those can be linked directly to the pandemic or not.

We recognise, of course, that there are strongly held and in many cases very valid concerns about decisions that were taken in response to the pandemic, including in areas within the department’s remit.

I do need to say at the start that whilst many of the decisions that were taken were, in some cases, incredibly difficult judgements, with, as has been said on many occasions, no good options available, it is, as you observed this morning, not quite right to view them as somehow setting up a binary competition between children’s interests and those of the rest of society.

Children were, in general, less likely to suffer serious illness as a result of Covid-19, but even if they were at low risk from the virus, it was not in their interests, any more than it was in the interests for adults, for the pandemic to be prolonged or for infection and death rates to be higher than they were.

When measures necessary to contain the pandemic had adverse impacts on children, their interests still did not point in only one direction, ie against the imposition of those measures.

The department has been clear in its written and oral evidence, and in our opening submissions, that it accepts that there was not sufficient planning for the impact of a lockdown on children, in particular for large-scale restriction on attendance at schools, both in terms of how education could be delivered in that eventuality and in terms of the wider role that school fulfils in children’s lives, including as a place of safety, of respite, and of course the main place where they are seen by adults outside the home.

In terms of lessons learned, the Inquiry can be absolutely confident that this one has been taken to heart. You have evidence from Ms Acland-Hood, who is, I should say, the current Permanent Secretary of the Department for Education, that the department has both significantly strengthened its own capabilities, including through developing playbooks for responses to risks such as infectious diseases, and that it has ensured that it is now firmly embedded in conversations across government on resilience, so that the interests of children and young people are now fully represented at the table.

The department is not complacent. It continues to look at where it can further strengthen its emergency planning function and following its participation in Exercise Pegasus this month, it is now in a position to be starting a process of engaging with the sector, including representatives of children’s voices, to take this planning forward in partnership with them.

If – and of course we all fervently hope this is not the case – the closure of schools were to become necessary in the future, the risks and available mitigations will have been thought through and planned for so far as that is possible.

Of course, the Inquiry will also need to wrestle with some very difficult issues concerning the measures that were in fact taken during the specified period and the lessons that can be learned from those.

Before turning to the specifics, it’s worth just saying a little about the context, about how the systems concerned work, because a clear understanding of where responsibilities lie within the system and why is crucial to an analysis of how things could be done better.

The autonomy and accountability of local authorities and schools in delivering social care and education is a feature of the system, not a bug. The system is designed to put as much decision making as possible in the hands of those closest to the children it serves.

The role of the department is not to dictate the detail of day-to-day practice to teachers or social workers but to set and to operate a framework that enables good practice and self-improvement. Its levers for doing this are primarily through legislation and guidance.

So dealing firstly with guidance, there’s always a tension as to the extent to which it can or should seek to deal with every eventuality as opposed to the extent to which it allows professional judgement by those who know children best.

The fact that it does not lead to complete uniformity of practice is not of itself problematic. As Ms Morris put it, it may demonstrate somebody finding just as effective a way to do what needs to be done locally.

The department does of course recognise that a higher degree of central command and control may be necessary during a pandemic and it accepts that some of its guidance could have been better and clearer. It has certainly been clear from some of the evidence you have heard that it was not always understood in the way that it was intended.

There is, however, a need to guard against a reading that suggests that because social workers were not expressly directed to do something, or the guidance could have been read as saying they were not required to do it, that the profession would then have reacted by acting in any way other than what they judged to be in the best interests of the children they work with.

You heard evidence, for example, from the Director of Children’s Services at Kent County Council about how all children were RAG rated, how many received more visits than they would have done in normal times.

You also have a considerable body of evidence in the Local Government Association survey about changes to social work practice, and we’ll address that in more detail in our written closing, but in general it supports the other evidence you have heard about the profession acting responsibly and, for example, reductions in visits and increased time between visits being more limited than has perhaps been suggested.

The department also accepts that particularly in the early part of the pandemic, more could have been done to ensure that the voices of those outside government, who speak on behalf of children, were fed into decision making. That was not a function of not being interested in those voices, but about the inevitable speed at which decisions were being taken, coupled with the lack of planning and therefore the loss of opportunity to involve those organisations more in slower time, and as I’ve said, that is being done now.

That lack of input was perhaps felt most keenly in relation to the statutory changes that were made affecting both how they were understood in the sector and the way in which they were viewed as a threat to children’s rights, which was never the intention.

The department does not accept that the rights of children and young people were routinely overlooked or undermined. They were certainly front and centre in decisions that were taken within the Department for Education.

There is obviously scope for different views about how best to meet and serve children’s needs, but they were not ignored.

We’ll of course address the detail of the legislative changes in our closing written submissions, but in assessing the impact of those changes, we would urge the Inquiry to look at the evidence of what happened on the ground, and to consider what further steps could have better ensured the safe delivery of essential services, including, but very much not limited to, those that were the subject of legislative intervention.

For example, the British Association of Social Workers made a very valid point about the need to consider how social work could be safely practised in the same way as was done for medicine. That is something that warrants further consideration and planning for a future pandemic.

Just two further issues, if I may. The department fully appreciates the challenges in identifying the vulnerable children, and it acknowledges the concerns regarding the use of that term, and we’ll address that further in writing.

In practice during the pandemic, the term was used to mean at least two different things. The guidance on school attendance focused on two groups of children about whom it was known either that there was very likely to be a risk to them from being out of school, or that they had significant education, health or care needs.

The discretion given to schools to identify other children who would particularly benefit from being in school was deliberately broad and was designed to ensure that decisions were made by those who know children best and were best placed to judge, rather than attempt to prescribe an exhaustive list that would, by definition, not have included all those who needed it most.

But that attendance policy did not exhaust the Department’s understanding of children who were or may be vulnerable, and did not define the scope of the work of the Vulnerable Children’s Unit, which took a much broader approach to the term, that was broadly in line with that of the Children’s Commissioner.

So, finally, in terms of issues, a number of Core Participants have suggested to you, or are going to suggest to you, that measures such as incorporating the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, requiring children’s rights impact assessments across government, or the appointment of a children’s minister, would have made a material difference in the course of the pandemic.

Now, it is not really for the department to take a position on potential primary legislative change. In the spirit of constructive engagement, it is worth flagging that amendments that sought incorporation of the UNCRC in various ways, at least insofar as functions under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill are concerned was debated in the House of Lords, and ultimately the amendments were withdrawn, as recently as 18 September, and those making written submissions may wish to have a look at that debate.

On the machinery of government, so children’s minister, impact assessment points – which are both ways, of course, of seeking to ensure a focus on children in cross-government decision making – the Inquiry will no doubt have in mind the evidence of Ms Morris about what would actually have made a difference in her role as the senior responsible officer for vulnerable children, and that was a named person with responsibility in each department.

Sir Gavin Williamson, who described himself in evidence as being the secretary of state for children, said in answer to questions from the Children’s Rights Organisations that:

“We certainly pushed but we were one voice amongst many … So you would have different secretaries of state … pursuing different agendas.”

The evidence that simply giving someone the title “Minister for Children” would of itself solve any issues is hard to discern. What is undoubtedly needed is awareness across government of the need not only to consider children but to involve in decision making those who are able to identify and advocate for their interests.

Then, finally, on impact assessments, you have heard from Ms Acland-Hood that the department does use children’s rights impact assessments and finds them a helpful tool in many circumstances, but also that what is most important is ensuring that those things that are really capable of making a difference in the presenting circumstances are bought to the attention of decision makers. So prescribing a requirement for children’s rights impact assessment in every situation may or may not be the most effective way of ensuring that, as she put it, in the moment of making those very difficult decisions, there is a remorseless focus on the really big, serious impacts that might genuinely shift decision making.

Ultimately, the best time to plan to consider potential impacts and to build the relationships necessary to ensure the best possible outcomes for children in a future pandemic or civil emergency is now. And the department is committed to doing that.

It remains only to reiterate the department’s thanks to the teaching and social care workforce for their extraordinary efforts during the pandemic., to the other Core Participants for the constructive way they’ve approached this Inquiry, to the Inquiry itself and the team let by Ms Dobbin for conducting this important investigation. And it’s appropriate that some of the last words spoken in this module are to thank and to acknowledge children and young people themselves, whose experiences, rights and needs must always be the subject of our fullest attention.

Thank you, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much for your help, Ms Ward. I’m very grateful.

Ms Dobbin, I think that completes the business for these hearings …

Sorry, did I catch you by surprise?

Ms Dobbin: You did.

Yes, my Lady, I think it does.

Closing Remarks by the Chair

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed.

Ms Ward has just mentioned constructive engagement, and, I have to say, I’ve been extremely impressed by the extent of constructive engagement in this module. So thank you to all those who have made oral submissions and/or supplied written submissions. I will consider them all with great care.

And that completes the oral hearings for Module 8, the devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on children and young people.

The evidence was at times distressing, but together, we have investigated thoroughly the complex issues raised, and all the evidence, written and oral, will help me, with the assistance of my team, to formulate my findings and recommendations.

As with all the modules, work will now begin in earnest on writing the report.

The next report for the Inquiry to be published is for Modules 2, 2A, 2B and 2C, key decision making across the United Kingdom, and that is coming out on 20 November 2025.

Other reports will then follow for subsequent modules and they will be published at intervals throughout 2026. Any remaining reports will be published in the first half of 2027. I repeat my promise that we shall publish all reports as soon as we reasonably can.

Finally, I should like to echo Ms Dobbin’s thanks and indeed the thanks of many of the advocates for the Core Participants, thanks to all those who have contributed to these oral hearings and that have helped to bring them to a successful conclusion, with

particular thanks to the Core Participants and their

legal teams, and the largely invisible teams who support

them and me and my team, and keep us all on track. We

couldn’t have done it without you, and may I end with

a hope that those advocates I’ve had to cut short on

occasion will forgive my interventions.

Thank you all very much indeed, that completes the

hearings for Module 8.

(2.47 pm)

(The hearing for Module 8 concluded)