There’s only ever one winner from public hearings like the Covid inquiry – and it isn’t the British people
GODFATHER author Mario Puzo once said: “A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.”
Looking at the number of “briefs” populating the Covid inquiry while sucking at the teat of the already over-burdened public piggy bank, you can see his point.
Yes, it’s important to get salient questions answered about what went wrong when, like the rest of the world, the UK got poleaxed by coronavirus and, if a pandemic happened again, learn from the mistakes made.
Instead, we have a highly paid KC seemingly obsessed with trivialities such as who called who what rude name on WhatsApp while ignoring many of the core issues.
We are seeing some headline names now, hence the extensive media coverage, but the inquiry started five months ago and has already cost nearly £70million.
According to its own quarterly accounts, it is spending around £18million every three months, and £9.7million of that is “legal costs”.
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It figures when you consider that the aforementioned KC is leading a team of 62 barristers, there’s a team of 30 solicitors too and there’s back-up of numerous paralegals.
By the time it draws to a close (estimated to be 2026), analysis put together by the Taxpayers Alliance suggests the overall cost will be around £156million.
Meanwhile, in another part of our capital city, another bunch of lawyers are chalking up highly paid hours while fighting Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s plans to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda — a country that, ironically, I’m travelling to in February to see its famed gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.
But it looks like I might have the plane to myself thanks to the “star chamber” of legal advisers to the pro-Brexit, taxpayer-funded European Research Group who have challenged the legislation as it stands because “we do not believe that it goes far enough to deliver the policy as intended” and would need “very significant amendments”.
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Cutting jobs
They want the policy toughened up, while another tranche of lawyers are making a mint from trying to stop it altogether.
And yet more are helping charmers like Somalian gang rapist Yaqub Ahmed, whose fight to avoid deportation cost us £85k in legal aid.
Then we have the BBC which, when it’s not prosecuting 1,000 people a week for not having a TV licence, is arguing for an increase in the annual fee while cutting dozens of jobs across its news departments.
And yet it has managed to spend over £100,000 so far on, you’ve guessed it, legal fees to fight against a Freedom of Information request from journalist Andy Webb.
Mr Webb wants sight of thousands of emails between BBC bosses about Martin Bashir’s controversial Panorama interview with Princess Diana in 1995, and a judge has now ruled that they should be handed over.
But despite the order landing on everyone’s desks over a week ago, Mr Webb says he’s received nothing and that the BBC “also mention prospect of an appeal.
If they’ve spent £100k thus far, how much more?”. Quite.
Don’t get me wrong.
We need lawyers, and there are plenty of brilliant ones out there doing fantastic work.
But when it comes to “other people’s money” — i.e. the state coffers — it’s treated as a never-ending supply of cash by an industry of litigators arguing among themselves and seemingly more concerned with “winning” than representing the best interests of the taxpayer.
JUDI AT A FUN STAGE
DAME Judi Dench says her failing eyesight has got her in to some scrapes.
She recently called Paddington actor Ben Whishaw from the bath, but didn’t realise it was on FaceTime, she shouted “w***er” at Alistair McGowan out of a car then discovered it wasn’t him, and passed a note saying “fancy a shag” to what she thought was a friend at the theatre but who turned out to be a complete stranger.
Old age ain’t for the faint-hearted, but boy it can sometimes be fun.
MAKING AN ASH OF IT
ACCORDING to a survey, just over half of us would be happy not to spend money on a funeral.
Instead, our loved ones would send us off to be cremated somewhere, before our ashes were then returned in the post.
Until recently, this idea might have appealed to me.
But in September, our dog Jasper died and I booked the exact same service.
On the day the ashes were due back, I received a message at work to say they’d been delivered to my neighbour, along with a photo of her front door.
But she knew nothing about it, so I concluded they’d been left on her doorstep and stolen.
It was the night before rubbish collection, so I spent the evening rifling through my neighbours’ bins in case the “thief” had subsequently dumped it. But nothing.
To cut a long story short, my complaint led to the driver admitting that he hadn’t delivered it to my neighbour and had actually lobbed it over my high garden wall.
Eventually, I found the package – ironically covered in “Handle With Care” stickers – lodged behind the barbecue where the tarpaulin cover had obscured it during an earlier search.
We can laugh about it now that his ashes are safely home.
But if it had been “grandad”? Maybe not so much.
NIGEL’S LOVER HAS CAUGHT THE JUNGLE
FEVER
IT’S been reported that when Nigel Farage survived a plane crash in 2010, his political aides had to juggle visits between his then- wife Kirsten, his lover Laure Ferrari and another woman he was rumoured to be having an on/off dalliance with.
One wonders how he found the time. But I digress.
Now divorced, he’s finally gone public with 44-year-old Ms Ferrari, who was there to greet him when he emerged from the I’m A Celebrity jungle on Sunday night.
And judging by the media interviews she gave prior to his eviction, she’s beyond thrilled to be out in the open and very comfortable in the limelight.
In fact, the safari-style outfit she wore to greet him as he exited the reality show suggests that, next year, she may well be up for entering the celebrity jungle herself.
WALES’ TRUMPCARD
THE Prince and Princess of Wales and their children have gone for a dressed-down (by royal standards, anyway) look for their family Christmas card this year.
Fashion journalist Karen Dacre says: “Relatability and an unmistakable breed of modern glamour is the message William and Kate will share with the world this December…”
As well as a royally large “up yours” to the Sussexes of Montecito.
CLEETHORPES Working Men’s Club in Lincolnshire is considering a name change because the title might put women off.
In the Seventies there were 4,500 of these clubs.
Now there are just 1,200 and 40 per cent have the same description over the door.
It feels like my entire childhood was spent in one of these clubs and, trust me, they might have had “working men’s” in the title but the women ruled the roost.
Most notably at closing time when they’d declare “you’ve had enough” and drag their, ahem, beloved home by the scruff of his neck.
LABOUR MP Jess Phillips has rejected criticism that her recent breast reduction might be “anti-feminist”.
Quite right too.
After all, there’s nothing remotely feminist about an adult lifetime of neck and back pain.
JOB OF A GRAN
BOBBY BRAZIER’S gran Jackiey Budden is reportedly barred from being in the Strictly audience because of a long-standing rift with his dad Jeff.
Certain viewers have been questioning her absence online, with comments such as, “I know she’s not the best, but she’s his gran.”
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Firstly, none of us knows what’s gone on behind closed doors.
Secondly, being a gran involves turning up for mundane stuff along the way, not just the showbiz bit.