The Covid Inquiry’s Endorsement of Censorship Sets a Chilling Precedent

According to the UK’s Covid Inquiry, whose fourth report was published in April, there was “in principle, nothing unlawful or inappropriate in the government monitoring publicly available social media to identify potential trends in disinformation or misinformation” during the pandemic period. The same report, in declining to criticise the censorious activities of the UK Government during the pandemic, noted that the UK government’s Counter Disinformation Unit was required to ensure that its actions were “lawful, necessary and proportionate”.

On a careful reading of this language, the inquiry stops (just) short of expressly endorsing the full scope and extent of the government’s censorship operation.  However, the relevant sections of the inquiry’s report create the distinct, and we can assume deliberate, impression that the CDU’s censorship operation was conducted in accordance with constitutional and democratic principles, and was not only justified but was necessary and proportionate. 

As someone who was on the receiving end of that censorship operation, with the receipts to evidence the very broad scope of commentary that was judged by the CDU to be wrongful or dangerous, this came as a serious disappointment, albeit not a great surprise.

Some would argue that in a national emergency scenario, some degree of information monitoring and intervention might be justified. The trouble with that argument is that one very quickly then has to grapple with the fact that – as we saw during the pandemic period – it’s precisely in moments of national crisis – moments where critical decisions must be made in complex situations – that contrasting views are most valuable and essential. As Jay Bhattacharya, Acting Director of the US Centres for Disease Control, has put it: “Dissent is the very essence of science.”

In my own case, the offending posts and articles caught by the CDU were typically either opinion pieces or comments quoted in mainstream news articles. They included such outlandish and outrageous statements as, “It would be unforgivable to close schools”, “Let children use playgrounds” and “It is indefensible that children’s lives are still not back to normal when the rest of society is”. Clearly, many would now agree with these viewpoints. However, even if some, or indeed many might not have agreed with those points of view at the time, the fact that they were valid, lawfully-expressed opinions cannot be disputed.

Perhaps the CDU’s hypersensitivity would not have mattered so much if, as according to the Covid Inquiry’s account, all that was happening during that period was “monitoring” of public sentiment by the government. The inquiry’s report notes that the CDU had ‘trusted flagger’ status with all of the major social media platforms, the effect of which was that CDU flags received special attention; but the same report is at pains to record that decisions about removing or suppressing content “remained exclusively a decision for each social media platform”.

Yet a subsequent investigation by the Telegraph revealed that 90% of the posts referred to social media companies by the CDU were taken down. Indeed, evidence given to the inquiry by the former head of the CDU confirmed that when information was flagged by the CDU it “immediately goes to the top of the pile. Whoever it is in whatever company then acts on it. It is the same system they have across government for things like terrorist content.”

What makes this even worse is that the remit of the CDU went beyond anything that could reasonably be termed mis- or disinformation. In particular, we know in relation to Covid vaccine-related commentary – because a CDU official told a Parliamentary Select Committee in December 2020 – that each of the following categories of content was considered for flagging and removal as ‘anti-vaccine misinformation’:

• commentary about the speed of the development of the Covid vaccines: “It is not safe, those kinds of narratives”;
• commentary about side-effects from the Covid vaccines; and
• commentary about “monetary and big business and links to pharma”, which seems to indicate that criticism of the pharma industry and its financial influence were off limits.

All of this is in sharp contrast to events on the other side of the pond. In May 2024, a US Congressional report observed in the context of its examination of the Biden administration’s pandemic censorship operations: “By suppressing free speech and intentionally distorting public debate in the modern town square, ideas and policies were no longer fairly tested and debated on their merits. Instead, policymakers implemented a series of public health measures that proved to be disastrous for the country.” Free debate is one of the key measures of the health of a democracy. Without it, we lose the ability to challenge and to stress test ideas. As we saw during the pandemic, it is often when speech is most controversial that the need to hear it is greatest.

In contrast with the US where a degree of candid investigation of core pandemic failings, especially concerning the suppression of speech and social media censorship, is now taking place, our own Covid Inquiry has completely side-stepped its duty to properly interrogate serious infringements of cornerstone rights and principles of public discourse. Given the investigations going on in the US and the fact that key reports have been public for close to two years, not only is this approach wilfully blind but it is an affront to the liberal democratic ideal of free speech. It sets an appalling precedent, whereby in future public health crisis (or potentially any crisis) we can now expect broad-in-scope monitoring and narrative control of lawful, and indeed essential, contrasting views to be the norm. And, it is disingenuous. At the same time that the inquiry has defended the patent overreach of the government’s censorship operation, it has completely ignored the flagrant, extensive and devastating mis- and disinformation propagated during that same period by pharmaceutical companies, government ministers and senior public health officials who were permitted and encouraged to make statements which were manifestly inflated, exaggerated, coercive or untrue.

Official statements overstating the safety and efficacy of the Covid vaccine programme, particularly when combined with coercive policies affecting children, are blatant examples of dangerous misinformation. Each of the major vaccine manufacturers has now been found guilty by the UK regulator, many on repeated occasions, for the persistent overstating of benefit and understating of harm in relation to their Covid vaccine products. And yet the inquiry’s report is completely silent on this topic.

Unfortunately the end result, as predicted by many Daily Sceptic readers, is a shameful whitewash that will only further corrode trust in public health.

Molly Kingsley is founder of UsForThem and co-host of the (new!) Broken Custodians podcast.

My deep disillusionment with the Covid Inquiry is one of the reasons why, with my co-campaigner for pandemic accountability (and husband) Ben Kingsley, we have this week launched the Broken Custodians podcast, which is out now on YouTube and Spotify.