This online roundtable will bring together leading figures from the legal, political, media, academic and business worlds – as well as some of those hardest-hit by the pandemic – to discuss how COVID-19 public inquiries should be organised, managed and communicated in order to achieve meaningful outcomes for all, and to build the trust and resilience required to better deal with future crises.

In a series of discussion groups chaired by the Editor of Prospect Magazine, Alan Rusbridger, and Sir Geoff Mulgan, Co-Investigator, International Public Policy Observatory, we will address such questions as: How can the Covid Public Inquiry help the whole of society?

The programme

What lessons can be learned from past inquiries around the world?

*Daniel Holder (Deputy Director, Committee on the Administration of Justice)

*Kate O’Regan (Director, Bonavero Institute of Human Rights)

*Sir Brian Leveson (Chair, Leveson Inquiry)

What are the key societal and economic issues that must be addressed as part of the COVID-19 learning and accountability process?

*Fozia Irfan (Director of Children & Young People, BBC Children in Need)

*Professor Stephen Reicher (Professor of Social Psychology, University of St Andrews)

*Gisela Abbam FRSA (Chair, British Science Association)

To what degree is the UK public inquiry capable of delivering on these aims, and how can the implementation of its findings be ensured?

*Dr Emma Ireton (Associate Professor in Law, Nottingham Law School)

*Michael Mansfield QC (Chair, Peoples’ COVID Inquiry)

*Sir Jeremy Farrar (Director, Wellcome Trust)

Summing up

*Sir Lawrence Freedman (Emeritus Professor of War Studies, KCL)

During the event we will be hearing three personal perspectives of the full impacts of the pandemic on bereaved families, minority ethnic communities and bedside hospital nurses, and what they hope and expect from the COVID inquiry process.

About the organisers

Prospect: For 27 years, Prospect has been an oasis of ideas, good writing and thoughtful debate in a desert of information chaos. Prospect is independent: it has no political affiliation or agenda. It promises never to tell you what to think or how to vote. Its motive is not profit. Each issue brings together the sharpest minds on the most challenging events and ideas that define the modern world.

The International Public Policy Observatory (IPPO) has been working over the last year to synthesise the best-available research evidence and findings from a network in more than 100 countries to guide decision-makers grappling with what to do around education, care, mental health, housing and other issues. Its inquiries-related work includes building a ‘living map’ of COVID-19 public inquiries around the world, which will be launched to coincide with this event.