IEA Director of Public Policy and Communications Matthew Lesh has been quoted in The Daily Telegraph raising concerns that the inquiry into the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic is too narrow.

The article said:

“The Covid inquiry is ‘rearranging the deck chairs’ on the Titanic and ‘limiting outside voices’ on the effects of lockdown, the authors of a landmark report have said.

“The think tank that published the research, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), approached the Covid inquiry seeking to submit it as formal evidence. 

“It has taken several weeks for a response, it claims, and there are still no assurances it will be included.

“The experts have now raised concerns that the inquiry is ‘self-selecting’ who should give evidence by making it difficult to submit contrarian research. They fear the ‘fundamental question’ of whether harsh lockdown measures were really necessary will not be properly examined.

“Matthew Lesh, the director of public policy at the IEA, said: ‘The fundamental question at the heart of the Covid-19 inquiry should be whether or not it was appropriate to take such extreme, unpreceded and totalitarian lockdown measures.’

“Yet from the ‘core participants’ to the first set of witnesses, almost nobody is questioning the cozy establishment view.

“The inquiry appears designed to limit outside voices, self-selecting who can give so-called ‘expert’ evidence and demonstrating no clear way to submit contrarian research’.”

Read the full article here.

You can also find out more about the research published by the IEA into the impact of COVID lockdowns and download a full copy of the book here.