Consultations: cutting COVID corners

• The Court of Appeal ruled that the Secretary of State for Education acted unlawfully in not consulting the Children’s Commissioner and other material bodies before making significant temporary changes to ten statutory instruments governing the children’s social care system.

The verb consult has various shades of meaning including to seek advice from and to discuss. So, when Lewis Carroll’s Alice became stranded in a pool of her own tears, along with creatures including a mouse, an unextinct dodo and an eaglet, they decided to have ‘a consultation’ on how to get dry. Their solution was obviously to endure a particularly dry (in the sense of dull and boring) history lecture by the mouse.

But consult also means to seek the views of others. So before taking important family decisions, we are likely to consult (in the sense of establish the views of) those particularly affected. However, while these individuals would