Mattias Desmet, Sunetra Gupta and Jolyon Maugham chaired by Stephen Law

Clinical psychologist Professor Mattias Desmet, epidemiologist Professor Sunetra Gupta and tax barrister, writer and director of Good Law Project Jolyon Maugham look at what can be learned from the waste and loss experienced during the Covid pandemic.

An astonishing £2.6 billion may have been lost to corruption and waste during the Covid pandemic. The new Chancellor of The Exchequer has appointed a ‘Covid corruption tsar’ to try to claw back at least some of the money lost. What lessons can we learn from the incompetence, and worse, that led to the loss of billions? Where did the money go, and is any of it recoverable? Was the scandal merely a blip, an anomaly caused by the urgency of the crisis, or was it symptomatic of a deeper problem within British politics?

Desmet is a professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University. He is author of the international bestseller The Psychology of Totalitarianism. Since the onset of the Covid crisis he has become known as the leading expert on mass formation. His work has been discussed widely in the media, including on The Joe Rogan Experience and in Forbes, The New York Post, and on Fox News.

Gupta is professor of theoretical epidemiology at the University of Oxford, researching into the evolution of infectious diseases and the development of novel vaccines, and with a special interest in the public understanding of science. Gupta is also a novelist and translator and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Maugham is a tax barrister, writer and director of Good Law Project, a non-profit organisation that uses the law to ‘hold power to account’. He has advised both the UK government and the opposition on tax policy. Maugham is also an honorary professor at the University of Durham. His books include Bringing Down Goliath, How Good Law Can Topple the Powerful.

Discussions are chaired by Dr Stephen Law, philosopher and academic, and author of bestselling introductions to philosophy for adults and children, including The Philosophy Gym. Law is also the editor of the Royal Institute of Philosophy Journal Think, and the festival’s major projects director.