The Right Honourable Baroness Heather Hallett DBE, Chair of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, has today announced core participants for Module 8, which will examine the impact of the pandemic on children and young people in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. After a number of preliminary hearings, the first held today, Module 8 public hearings will commence in autumn 2025. Article 39 is one of 25 core participants for this critical part of the public inquiry – the only module to be devoted to children and young people.
Article 39 welcomes the Chair’s recognition that it is well-placed to assist the Inquiry in several aspects of Module 8, including when examining the consideration given by government to the needs and rights of children throughout the pandemic, children’s social care arrangements, and the impact of the pandemic on children in custody and those affected by the immigration system.
Carolyne Willow, Article 39’s Director, said:
“One month into the first lockdown, in April 2020, the last government used secondary legislation to delete and dilute 65 safeguards for vulnerable children and young people. There had been two previous failed attempts – before the pandemic – to introduce similar deregulation in children’s social care. On those occasions, government said it was encouraging innovation and busting myths about local authority statutory duties towards children in care and care leavers. Then, at the outset of the pandemic, ministers characterised children’s legal safeguards as ‘burdens’ and claimed they had no choice but to deregulate.
Following a judicial review brought by Article 39, the Court of Appeal found that the then Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson MP, had acted unlawfully in making substantial changes to children’s legal protections without consulting the Children’s Commissioner for England or any other body representing the rights and interests of children.
We hope to assist the Inquiry in exploring government decision-making at the time, and the extent to which effective structures and systems were in place to ensure children’s rights and interests were properly considered, including arrangements for consulting the Children’s Commissioner on all significant matters of policy affecting children.
We are pleased the Inquiry is seeking to hear about the experiences of children and young people in a wide variety of circumstances, and will do all we can to help shine a light on what life was like for especially vulnerable children and young people, including those who were in the care of the state, or needed this protection, and children living in mental health inpatient units, residential special schools and prisons.
The purpose of all this careful scrutiny must be to ensure that, in ordinary times, government routinely and systematically promotes and protects the rights and interests of children and young people, so that when another pandemic or similar crisis occurs thinking through what children need, and how to mitigate harms to them, and then acting on those considerations, will be second-nature.”
The 25 core participants for Module 8 are:
- Article 39
- British Association of Social Workers
- Cabinet Office
- Office of the Children’s Commissioner (England)
- Children’s Commissioner for Wales
- Clinically Vulnerable Families
- Convention of Scottish Local Authorities
- Coram Group of Charities
- Department for Education
- Department for Education (Northern Ireland)
- Department of Health (NI)
- Department of Health and Social Care
- Disabled People’s Organisations
- Local Government Association and Welsh Local Government Association
- Long Covid Kids/Long Covid Kids Scotland
- Ministry of Justice
- Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People
- Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation
- Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
- Save the Children UK, Just for Kids Law, the Children’s Rights Alliance for England, the Centre for Young Lives and the Child Poverty Action Group (‘Children’s Rights Organisations’)
- Scottish Ministers
- The Secretary of State for the Home Department
- The Sutton Trust
- Trade Unions Congress
- Welsh Government
Article 39 is represented by Martha Cover from Coram Chambers, and was one of 12 core participants who made oral submissions at today’s first preliminary hearing.