Why do we have inquiries? The late Geoffrey Howe suggested six principal reasons: to establish the facts, to learn from the events, to provide catharsis for those affected, to reassure the public that matters are being resolved, to allocate accountability and blame, and the political urge to show something is being done. By those metrics, the Covid inquiry is not only failing, but becoming a farce.

The row over Boris Johnson’s WhatsApps between the Government, the ex-PM, and the inquiry chair Baroness Hallett may end up in court. The inquiry looks set to conclude its public hearings in the summer of 2026. Subjects such as Covid contracts and decisions on care homes will not be tackled until 2025 – five years after the pandemic began, and after Matt Hancock will have left parliament.

This may be good news for Johnson, Hancock, and any other ex-minister worried about having their records publicly scrutinised (and any lawyers they’ll be keeping on retainer). But it is terrible news for anyone who wants to learn the truth behind the decisions made at the height of the Covid pandemic, who want to prevent any mistakes being made again, or want justice for loved ones who died.

Voters are expected to go to the polls next year without having heard about the most important decisions the Conservatives made in office: why they locked us down, closed schools, spent hundred of billions on furlough, Test and Trace and Eat Out to Help Out. How does that enable the public to hold those responsible to account?

Any sense of catharsis will be impossible to achieve if the time frame of this inquiry is anything like that of its recent predecessors. The Bloody Sunday Inquiry took 12 years. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse took eight years, and the Iraq War Inquiry took seven. The Grenfell Tower Inquiry is in about to enter its sixth year and seems no closer to completion.

That was a tragedy that killed 72 people. There are 220,000 people with Covid-19 on their death certificate in the UK. We have been told the Cabinet Office has already handed over 55,000 documents and 24 witness statements. Johnson says he has handed over 5,000 documents and 300 pages of emails. With that and more to examine, seeing a final report within the decade seems unlikely.

Hallett promises a series of interim reports in the meantime. That is lipstick on a pig – an attempt to justify an inquiry which is clearly fundamentally flawed. Johnson was wrong to give the inquiry such a broad remit. What should have been an exercise establishing the choices that were made, who was responsible for failures, and ensuring they aren’t repeated has become inflated beyond recognition.

Should the inquiry focus narrowly on what ministers did and when? Or should it tackle, as the inquiry’s counsel has promised campaigners, ‘inequalities, including race’? Or should it be, as it already seems to be becoming, an opportunity to further drag the greased piglet through the mud? Does anyone really want the next few years’ headlines to centre on yet more Boris Johnson psychodrama?

Rishi Sunak certainly shouldn’t. Not because endless headlines about his predecessor undermine his own tenuous hold on his party, or because he was one of the few cabinet ministers to emerge from the Covid years with any credit. A failure to conclude an inquiry and learn its lessons quickly leaves us vulnerable to another pandemic. No statesman should accept that.

And so – before another £85 million is spent – Sunak should consider scrapping the inquiry. The government set it up; the government should be able to stop it. Doing so would obviously leave the Prime Minister open to charges of attempting to cover up ministers’ records, or of preventing those who suffered in those long dark months from getting the truth and achieving some kind of closure.

Sunak should therefore replace the current public inquiry with a commission of specialists with a duty to examine the evidence, learn the lessons, and report back as quickly as possible. He has the perfect model for this: Sweden’s Coronavirus Commission. Established in 2020, it delivered its 800-page report within two years. Another example of how the Swedes handled Covid better.

In that time our inquiry hadn’t even settled on its terms of reference. We cannot afford anymore dither on a matter this pressing, or allow it to be consumed by either the Johnsonian tragicomedy or the shibboleths of the race-obsessed left. Rather than hand over the WhatsApps Hallett demands, Sunak should set up a Covid inquiry that is really fit for purpose.