The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) has published the government’s response to its report produced following a public inquiry into the government’s response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. In its response to the report the government notes that the PACAC makes detailed recommendations on the independent inquiry’s eventual terms of reference, but that owing to the fact that the government is ‘focused entirely on responding to the pandemic and saving lives, particularly as the country is experiencing a second wave of the virus’, it would ‘be premature to respond to each of these recommendations in detail at this stage’. Indeed, the government agrees overall that an independent inquiry into the coronavirus pandemic ‘should be established’ but ‘at the appropriate time’.