Family WhatsApp groups were a greater concern for spreading fake news during the pandemic than social media platforms, Kemi Badenoch has told the Covid inquiry.
The Conservative party leader, who was minister for equalities during the crisis, said experts could easily challenge false information shared on platforms such as X because the posts were public.
Less visible falsehoods were more worrying and ministers had no insight into fake claims shared on private WhatsApp groups, she said. “A lot of false information travels very quickly through those channels … And it’s everything from ‘vaccines will kill you’ to ‘the government is suppressing information.’”
Badenoch said comments from “likely reputable” sources such as the British Medical Association were used to support misinformation, telling the inquiry that BMA representatives “genuinely believed” ministers were suppressing information. “When you see that on a public forum you’ll think: ‘Oh well, if the doctors in the BMA think that, then it must be true.’”
The BMA said government delays in publishing information put people’s lives at risk.
Covid vaccination rates were, and still are, significantly lower in minority ethnic groups than among white people, with racial inequalities, poor access, mistrust and misinformation all contributing, the inquiry has heard.
Ministers came up with a range of measures to improve uptake, from vaccination centres in places of worship to working with the BBC Asian Network World Service, but it was unclear which were most effective. “The feedback mechanisms for what actually works are very weak,” Badenoch said. “It’s very hard to know what is working and what isn’t.”
The problem reflected a broader issue, with Badenoch saying “data was the biggest challenge” in the crisis. “We constantly encountered issues in just finding out what was going on,” she told the inquiry. “I remember us trying to find out the ethnicity of people who had been dying, especially the frontline ethnic minority workers in the NHS, but we didn’t have that.”
The Covid inquiry is examining the UK’s handling of the pandemic, the impact it had and lessons for the future. The first report, released last year by the chair, Lady Hallet, flagged “fatal strategic flaws” in pandemic planning and said citizens everywhere were failed as a result. The latest module focuses on vaccines and therapeutics, regarded by many as a rare highlight in the nation’s response to the crisis.
Families bereaved by Covid said in November they had felt insulted when Badenoch called the Partygate scandal overblown. She said the former prime minister Boris Johnson had fallen into a “trap” of breaking lockdown rules that should never have been put in place.
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Prof Phil Banfield, chair of council at the BMA, said: “We knew from early in the pandemic that people from ethnic minorities were disproportionately affected by Covid-19, including higher numbers of deaths and serious illness – and many were healthcare workers, risking their lives every day to keep the country safe.
“Despite conducting a review into this – which the BMA was one of the first organisations to call for – the government initially failed to publish its recommendations and the actions it would take to address this issue, leading to unnecessary delays and putting more lives at risk. It was this, which we wrote to Ms Badenoch about on several occasions at the time, that we demanded urgent clarity on.
“To suggest the BMA was spreading misinformation at the time is highly disingenuous. All we were doing was asking the government to be transparent about how and when it was planning to take action to save lives and address racial inequalities.”
