Ed Miliband's pandemic inquiry call a reminder that it will not go away - The Yorkshire Post says

The latest intervention, this time by former Labour leader and Doncaster North MP Ed Miliband again shows how it is an issue that campaigners will not drop.

Furthermore, it highlights how the inquiry, promised last July, shouldn’t only address competence but also the underlying social inequalities which may have exacerbated the pandemic in some areas.

In an interview with The Yorkshire Post, Mr Miliband said that “there’s a deeper thing here which is when this inquiry finally does happen into COVID, of course it’s got to be about the judgments the Government made about when they went into lockdown and all that, but it’s also about these deeper questions of deprivation and inequality, because there’s certainly a lot of evidence and a lot of people saying that one of the reasons that we as a country as a whole, and particular parts of our country have really faced such tough times, is because of the levels of inequality, deprivation or housing.”

It comes after Hemsworth MP Jon Trickett urged the Government to take action after it emerged that more than a third of England’s recent workplace outbreaks were in this region.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has rebuffed calls for an investigation to start now. He and fellow Ministers should accept that a successful vaccination push does not give them immunity from facing up to questions, sooner than they might like, about just how well the Government served the country in its direst time of need.