The inquiry into the handling of the coronavirus pandemic in the UK must investigate structural racism as a key issue, a campaign group representing bereaved families has said.

The Covid Bereaved Families for Justice organisation called for an expert witness in the field of structural racism to be instructed as part of the inquiry set up to shed light on the UK’s preparedness in the lead-up to the pandemic.

A letter to Baroness Hallett, the retired judge leading the inquiry, said there is concern that structural racism will not be explicitly considered.

It said: “Covid-19 is not just a health crisis; it’s also a social and economic crisis. The ability to cope, to protect and to shield oneself from the virus varies vastly for people from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.”

Signatories to the letter include the Black Equity Organisation, Caribbean and African Health Network, the Race Equality Foundation, the Runneymede Trust and the Windrush National Organisation.

The letter also calls for a “rethink” of the inquiry’s listening exercise, saying signatories were “disheartened” to learn that it has been “outsourced to PR companies with close ties to Government as part of an entirely separate process to the inquiry itself”.

Earlier this month a lawyer representing bereaved families told the chairwoman during a preliminary hearing that there was “considerable unease” among those who lost loved ones about PR firms who previously worked for the UK Government being hired.

Covid Bereaved Families for Justice said in its letter on Tuesday that “any inquiry must place the voices of those worst affected at its core; we expect the Covid-19 Inquiry to set up accessible consultations directly with minority ethnic communities and their representatives, to listen and then act upon their experiences”.

The signatories also called for an assurance that migrants’ rights groups and Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) communities are represented as core participants in the inquiry, giving them specific rights.

Understanding why the death toll was significantly higher amongst the black and minority ethnic community and listening to the bereaved has to be a priority

The groups behind the letter insisted structural racism must be investigated as a key issue in every module of the inquiry.

Three modules announced so far are resilience and preparedness (module one), Core UK decision-making and political governance (module two) and the impact of Covid-19 on healthcare systems in the four nations of the UK (module three).

The first preliminary hearing for module three is being held on Tuesday.

Jean Adamson, spokesperson for the campaign group, said: “If the Covid Inquiry is serious about understanding what went wrong during the pandemic and learning lessons to protect lives in the future, then understanding why the death toll was significantly higher amongst the black and minority ethnic community and listening to the bereaved has to be a priority.

“Sadly, the inquiry is running scared of doing either of those.

“The announcement that structural racism won’t be looked at during the module on ‘pandemic preparation’ is extremely worrying. As is the inquiry’s shocking decision to outsource listening to bereaved families to third parties who have an obvious conflict of interest, such as 23Red who worked with the Cabinet Office throughout the pandemic.

“After losing my dad to Covid-19, I put my heart and soul into campaigning for the Covid Inquiry, in the hope that it would prevent other families from going through the pain that mine have.

“If the inquiry is going to have a meaningful impact, it needs to listen to families like mine and learn from what happened to us, even if it finds that uncomfortable.”