Covid-19 Inquiry: Module 10 public hearings begin on the pandemic’s societal impact
17 February 2026
Garden Court North’s Covid Inquiry team, led by Pete Weatherby KC (pictured), represents the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK. Credit: Covid-19 Inquiry / YouTube.
Public hearings for Module 10 of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry have begun, with the final module focusing on the impact of the pandemic on society.
Earlier today (17 February 2026), Garden Court North’s Pete Weatherby KC made the opening submission on behalf of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice (CBFFJ) UK. CBFFJ UK, made up of more than 7,000 families who lost loved ones during the pandemic, is one of the Inquiry’s core participants.
As put by Pete, “from the start of the Inquiry, CBFFJ UK has sought to amplify the voices of the bereaved from across the four corners of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in order to ensure that lessons are learned and future lives are saved. It is impossible to properly learn lessons or change the future without a clear and deep understanding of lived experience of what has passed.”
Throughout Module 10, evidence will be submitted by bereavement groups, homeless shelters, mental health charities and others regarding the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on certain sectors of society. The module formally opened on 17 September 2024.
“In his evidence to Module 1, Matt Fowler said that right from the get-go, he and Joanna Goodman, the co-founders of CBFFJ UK, felt that the important thing was change,” Pete continued. “We need to learn lessons, we need to learn about things that went wrong, and we need to put something in place to prevent those mistakes from being carried out again in future. They did not know each other, but both lost their fathers, Ian and Stewart, at the start of April 2020, early in the pandemic. Incensed at what they saw as the absence of planning and an incompetent government, they joined up to campaign along with 7,000 others.”
CBFFJ UK began calling for an Inquiry back in 2020, in pursuit of truth, justice and accountability of what it says were preventable deaths of its members’ loved ones during the pandemic.
Once concluded, the Covid Inquiry will publish a series of reports corresponding to each module. In November 2025, Baroness Hallett DBE, Chair of the Inquiry, made 22 key findings and 19 recommendations in her report on Module 2 of the Inquiry, and determined that “inexcusable” mistakes and delays in imposing a lockdown led to approximately 23,000 avoidable deaths in the first wave leading up until 1 July 2020.
In his opening submission for CBFFJ UK, Pete concluded: “The evidence to be heard in Module 10 will elicit the impact not only of the pandemic itself, but of the failures of response that we’ve learnt from earlier modules. We will also highlight factors resulting in disparities of outcome. To borrow from the Joseph Rountree Foundation, ‘we may have been in the same storm, but we were not in the same boat’.”
“We do not minimise the huge challenges a health emergency brings, but failures next time can be averted by action now. Among the failures that this Inquiry has heard evidence of, the failure to prevent and mitigate the human impacts are clear. So is the mantra: planning, preparedness and proper resourcing is all. Thank you.”
Pete leads Garden Court North’s Covid-19 Inquiry Team, which is comprised of Anna Morris KC, Kate Stone, and Christian Weaver. The team is instructed by Nicola Brook of Broudie Jackson Canter to represent CBFFJ UK.
Additional media
The Independent – ‘Huge moment’ for bereaved families as pandemic inquiry’s final module opens
Channel 4 – What was the impact of the pandemic on society? Final module of Covid inquiry begins
For further information, please contact Alex Blair, Communications Manager at Garden Court North Chambers: ablair@gcnchambers.co.uk
