The Liberal Vannin Party has called for an independent chair to be appointed to conduct the proposed independent review into the island’s handling of the Covid 19 pandemic.

It wants the panel to be given the widest possible remit and says the review must be conducted in public and be open to all.

Last week, the Manx Independent reported that Chief Minister Alfred Cannan had ruled out a public inquiry into the way that the pandemic had been handled. But he said there would be a review.

He said that a full-blown public inquiry would be too expensive and take too long.

The Liberal Vannin party said that it understood the arguments against the potentially significant costs and timescale of a statutory public inquiry, but believed that public concerns on a wide range of issues meant that the review must be independent of government and, ’as far as possible’, Tynwald.

Liberal Vannin chair Paul Weatherall said: ’Liberal Vannin candidates stood at the last election on a manifesto that called for more openness and transparency, partly because of the way the last administration operated during the pandemic.

We need to ensure that any review is seen to be independent of those in Tynwald who were party to those decisions.

’The last two years have been unprecedented in peace time, and we are not out of the woods yet.

’We accept that all involved acted and continue to act in good faith for the benefit of the island but, undoubtedly, some mistakes were inevitable and we need to ensure that our new government both acknowledges them and learns from them.

’We hope that the review will begin early in the new year, to give time for the terms of reference to be developed and for the new government to publish their Island Plan setting out their aims for the next five years.’

The leader of the Liberal Vannin party is Health Minister Lawrie Hooper.