“Life changing decisions being made during coronavirus have felt like playing a game. Every time it should be our turn, someone skips over us and we end up being left behind and forgotten.”
Young advisor to Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People
“When Boris said grandparents can go and see people, my gran came to stay and jumped into the bed. Me and my sister started crying with happiness and she also slept with us like one or two nights.”
9-year-old child who took part in the Children and Young People’s Voices Research Project
“I lost my grandfather, as his cancer treatment was stopped … and we cared for him at home until he died in July 2020. I was 10, and I remember reading our favourite book to him just before he passed away. One that he had read to me so many times – ‘Guess how much I love you’. Well, I loved him to the moon and back.”
Child quoted by counsel for Northern Ireland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People
“I don’t go to school anymore. I want to keep going to my school but they won’t keep me safe. If I catch a virus, I’ll be sick for a very long time. I tried to go back to my school in September 2020 but my school did not look after me like they’d promised my mum. They made many use hand gel all day long even though I was allergic to it. They didn’t wear masks. Within a few weeks I’d caught a nasty virus and I was in bed for several weeks trying to get better.”
UK Covid-19 Inquiry Module 8 Hearings
Module 8 is the UK Covid-19 Inquiry’s dedicated module on children and young people. Hearings are taking place 29 September to 23 October 2025. As a core participant in this module, Article 39 is producing daily updates on the hearings.
Day 1 – 29 September 2025
In today’s first hearing dedicated to children and young people, several core participants underlined the importance of children’s rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child having the full force of law. Strong submissions were also made for governments across the UK to consistently consult their statutory children’s rights bodies, the Children’s Commissioners for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Below are extracts from today’s hearing submissions (in the order they were made). The full official transcript can be found here.
Lead counsel to the Inquiry, Clair Dobbin KC
… one of the first thematic issues which arises in Module 8 [is] the question of whether, in the context of increased risk, standards of care afforded to children diminished. In Module 8 this will be examined in some of the following ways: by considering the relaxation of laws across the UK intended to confer protection on children; the processes by which these relaxations were introduced, for example, including criticisms about lack of consultation, and that includes in England in relation to the Adoption and Children (Coronavirus) Regulations, which were held to be unlawful by reason of failure to consult the Children’s Commissioner for England. In Wales it encompasses the failure to conduct a child rights assessment for the first set of school closures. In both Scotland and Wales it encompasses criticisms and concerns that rights assessments were not undertaken with sufficient rigour. In Northern Ireland, it includes evidence that there were failures to consult the Children’s Commissioner there on a myriad of issues.
Counsel for Save the Children UK, Just for Kids Law, Children’s Rights Alliance for England, Centre for Young Lives and the Child Poverty Action Group (‘the children’s rights organisations’), Steve Broach KC
… we say that the rights and interests of children and young people were routinely overlooked or deprioritised throughout the pandemic, and indeed, were actively undermined at times when statutory entitlements were taken away or diluted … this lack of focus on the rights and interests of children was systemic. It wasn’t an unfortunate oversight; it resulted from a failure to embed the rights and interests of children in the centre of the machinery of government.
[…]
… in writing, the CROs [children’s rights organisations] have set out our preliminary position on the key recommendations needed, including the focus on ensuring children’s rights impact assessments are completed and published before all relevant decisions are taken, the incorporation of children’s rights in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into domestic law across the UK … and the setting of clear child poverty reduction targets.
Counsel for Article 39, Mark Twomey KC (see full opening submissions below)
The Amendment Regulations made changes to 10 statutory instruments, including reducing and removing legal duties relating to social worker visits, reviews of children’s welfare, and checks on children’s homes. These unquestionably substantial and wide-ranging changes were described at the time by the DfE [Department for Education] to the Children’s Commissioner for England as “minor burdens”. Both the High Court and the Court of Appeal rejected this characterisation of the changes, the latter describing them as having the potential to have a significant impact on children in care.
The Court of Appeal also found that there had been a select, one-sided consultation, and that the then Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson’s failure to consult with the Children’s Commissioner and children’s rights organisations was unlawful. It remains wholly unclear today why the government found time to consult with select others, but not the Children’s Commissioner for England. What does this unexplained failure to consult with the statutory body, charged with promoting and protecting the rights of children, in particular those living away from home, say about the status and importance of children’s rights in policy making at the time? What does it say about the culture within government to thoroughly mischaracterise the nature of the changes to children’s law?
Counsel for Coram, Sam King KC
On the basis of its own research and experiences during the pandemic, and having considered the evidence provided to the Inquiry, Coram has come to the view that if and when the next pandemic strikes, there is a need to put children at the heart of decision making and implementation. To that end as a pre-emptive step, Coram supports its colleagues in Article 39 and the CRO [children’s rights organisations] group’s call for the incorporation of the UNCRC across the UK. However, incorporation without good implementation is hollow.
Counsel for the Children’s Commissioner for Wales, David Gardner
In times of great adversity and significant pressure on decision makers and their advisers, oversights may be understandable, but that is why systems must be in place to ensure that the rights and protections of children and young people are upheld … Children are amongst those who will be most impacted by monumental pressures on society. The system must be able to withstand the greatest of pressures or it is an ineffective system.
The Commissioner encourages the Inquiry to consider the protection of children’s rights across the UK. At present the UNCRC rights of children are enshrined in law in Wales. This creates a due regard duty which the Welsh Government must observe. This leads to some important follow-on questions, which the Inquiry may wish to consider. Firstly, were the due regard duties properly adhered to in Wales? Secondly, had the due regard principles been properly adhered to in Wales, would the impact on children and young people in Wales have been mitigated? Thirdly, had similar due regard duties applied and been adhered to across the UK, would the impact on children and young people across the UK have been mitigated? And fourthly, had those protections been stronger, such as by direct incorporation of the UNCRC in similar terms to the Human Rights Act 1998, would the impact on children and young people across the UK have been mitigated? The Commissioner takes the preliminary view that the due regard duties were not fully and properly followed in Wales, and that had they been the impact on the pandemic on children and young people would very likely have been mitigated. And, further, had those protections been stronger, such as by direct incorporation of the UNCRC in similar terms to the Human Rights Act – as it has been in Scotland – the impact on children and young people across the UK may have been mitigated even further.
Counsel for the Welsh Government, Anna Bicarregui
As your Ladyship is aware, the Welsh Government formally adopted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as the basis for policy-making relating to children and young people as early as 2004 and from 2012 the Rights of Children and Young People Wales Measure 2011 placed the duty on Welsh ministers to consider children’s rights in all their actions and decisions. Your Ladyship will pose the question: so what? Did the legal framework materially change the approach of the Welsh Government to decision making in respect of children and young people? Was there an implementation gap as my learned friend for the Children’s Commissioner for Wales submits? What concrete evidence is there of a difference in approach in Wales? My Lady, you have detailed written evidence, and you’ll be hearing further evidence about that, but the Welsh Government’s position, and this is reflected in the written evidence of others, is that it did matter and it does matter that in Wales the UNCRC has routinely been part of decision making for the last 20 years. My Lady, I do pause there to note that the Welsh Government has listened to the strength of opinion in favour of full incorporation of the UNCRC, which is in the room today.
FULL opening submissions from lead counsel for Article 39, Mark Twomey KC
My Lady, on behalf of article 39, together with Mary Rachel McCabe, the focus of submissions and any questions will be on the most vulnerable children and young people in society – those in care, relying on the state for parenting and protection, and those living in state and privately-run institutions.
Children in detention, whether through the mental health or criminal justice systems, or in state care, are not one homogeneous group but there are features they routinely share: abuse or threat of abuse from carers; separation from parents and other family including siblings; the uncertainty and instability of being parented by a local authority with ever changing homes, carers, and professionals, often sent far from home; challenges to identity and self-worth.
For children in prison, a disproportionately high number of them were looked after prior to incarceration, their vulnerability is all too obvious.
As Counsel to the Inquiry highlighted, prior to the pandemic, nearly a third UK children were living in relative poverty, a quarter were in absolute poverty, and half of local authority children’s services in England were judged by Ofsted to be less than good.
The picture for a typical child in need was pretty bleak. That was the reality for the especially vulnerable children whom Article 39 serves.
It’s all the more important therefore that these children should be regarded, as the Scottish Children’s Commissioner says, as rights holders rather than passive objects of education, care or charity.
As the pandemic hit, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child called on governments to protect children whose vulnerability would be further increased, including children deprived of their liberty or confined, and children living in institutions.
We submit that the government’s core error in response to the pandemic was failing to consider the impact of policies on children, failing to listen to, consult, or act upon, the advice of professionals working with children, or to hear from children themselves on the impact of policy decisions.
The Scottish Children’s Commissioner quotes one of their young advisers in July 2020: “Life changing decisions being made during coronavirus have felt like playing a game. Every time it should be our turn, someone skips over us and we eligibility up being left behind and forgotten”.
Article 39 continues to regret that this Inquiry will not hear directly from children but respectfully suggests that this highlights the imperative to consider carefully evidence from the Children’s Commissioners and other children’s rights organisations.
The introduction of the Adoption and Children (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations in April 2020 is a good example of government failings. We have a carefully crafted statutory scheme for children in care and importantly for those first coming into care, often frightened, always extremely vulnerable – laws and established practices in place to ensure their rights and wellbeing.
The Amendment Regulations made changes to 10 statutory instruments, including reducing and removing legal duties relating to social worker visits, reviews of children’s welfare, and checks on children’s homes. These unquestionably substantial and wide-ranging changes were described at the time by the DfE to the Children’s Commissioner for England as “minor burdens”. Both the High Court and the Court of Appeal rejected this characterisation of the changes, the latter describing them as having the potential to have a significant impact on children in care.
The Court of Appeal also found that there had been a selective, one-sided consultation, and that the then Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson’s, failure to consult with the Children’s Commissioner and children’s rights organisations was unlawful.
It remains wholly unclear today why the government found time to consult with select others, but not the Children’s Commissioner for England. What does this unexplained failure to consult with the statutory body charged with promoting and protecting the rights of children, in particular those living away from home, say about the status and importance of children’s rights in policy making at the time? What does it say about the culture within government to thoroughly mischaracterise the nature of the changes to children’s law?
The profound errors behind the introduction of the Amendment Regulations yield the obvious submission that they could have been avoided had there been incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and a statutory obligation to consult with the Children’s Commissioner. But there are other examples of how things went very wrong for vulnerable children during the pandemic, most obviously children in prison.
Changes to an already impoverished and harmful regime were subject to no child rights impact assessments or consultation with the Children’s Commissioner for England. Children in young offender institutions and secure training centres had severely restricted time out of their cells – we say cells, not rooms – with some receiving only an hour-and-a-half a day and at weekends only 45 minutes. These changes meant that – in breach of the Mandela Rules – children were routinely subject to solitary confinement for long periods with inevitable debilitating consequences on their mental and physical health. Whilst vulnerable children in the community were encouraged to go to school, opportunities for learning and social interaction, and for physical exercise, children in prison had those significantly curtailed. A worksheet pushed under a cell door does not fulfil a child’s right to education.
Article 39 will seek to draw attention to the evidence that children living in secure children’s homes received much better protection due, surely, to the child-focused approach.
The starting point to avoid such mistakes in the future, in any future pandemic or national emergency, must be to recognise that children are individuals with clearly defined rights and entitlements which carry the force of law. That’s also why Article 39, together with other core participants, invites the Inquiry to approach this module and its conclusions through the prism of children’s rights and the UNCRC.
Article 39 will submit that throughout the pandemic there was no dedicated plan within government on how to protect the rights and interests of children generally, and vulnerable children and young people in particular. And this failure was due to the absence of a children’s rights strategy, including the incorporation of UNCRC into domestic law; the absence of a statutory duty on government to consult with respective Children’s Commissioners; and the absence of a Cabinet Minister for children with a children’s rights portfolio, one of IICSA’s [Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse] closing recommendations in October 2022.
Article 39 respectfully suggests that in the event of another pandemic, the key to ensuring that children’s rights are respected and their wellbeing safeguarded is in two core recommendations: firstly, that the UNCRC is incorporated into domestic law, in the same way that the Human Rights Act gives effect to certain provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights. Nobody sensibly suggested a suspension of the Human Rights Act during the pandemic. Indeed, it is a strong pointer to a rights-based approach, that in times of national emergency, governments need to have robust structures, robust guidance in place to ensure that decisions afford appropriate weight to the rights of all citizens, including children. In other words, it is precisely when government is under pressure to make quick decisions that effective tools and guidance are necessary, and incorporation of the UNCRC provides those tools.
Secondly, Article 39 respectfully suggests that there should be a statutory duty to consult with and give due weight to the advice of the Children’s Commissioner. These statutory bodies possess not just theoretical understanding of children’s rights but are required by law to be directly connected to the lived experience of children with critical channels for eliciting the perspectives of children and young people both in ordinary times and in emergencies. The Children’s Commissioner for England is required by law to use the UNCRC as her basis for determining children’s rights, yet without incorporation into law, this duty lacks a proper foundation.
If we do not have the structures and systems to uphold rights, to elicit, understand, and act upon the views, perspectives, and feelings of children, then that is when things go wrong. And if they go wrong for vulnerable children, the consequences can be disastrous.
The Amendment Regulations and the treatment of children in prison provide two standout examples of how things were prone to and did go wrong, and how the two recommendations would have prevented these errors. In the event of a future pandemic it will be essential for all children but most particularly vulnerable children in care or custody, that decisions affecting them are taken according to a rights-based approach.
Each Children’s Commissioner of each of the four nations of the United Kingdom identifies failures by their respective governments to heed children’s rights. Article 39 submits that this follows from each nation’s failure during the pandemic to have fully incorporated UNCRC, or to have a statutory obligation to consult with their Children’s Commissioner.
And so we endorse the recommendations made this morning on behalf of the CROs [children’s rights organisations].
Scotland directly incorporated the UNCRC into domestic law in 2024. It is surely intolerable that only children in one part of the United Kingdom have this protection in the event of a future pandemic or national emergency, there should be consistency of rights protection.
My Lady, I referred earlier to the Mandela Rules. When launching his children’s fund 30 years ago Nelson Mandela said, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way it treats its children”. What a telling observation when one looks, as this Inquiry will, into how, during the pandemic, our society treated its most vulnerable children. My Lady, we’re very grateful for the opportunity to address you this morning and those are our opening submissions.