Matt Hancock mocked by lawyer Hugo Keith after failing to find evidence of Boris Johnson call
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Matt Hancock has been mocked by Covid inquiry lead counsel Hugo Keith KC for having a “little notebook” to refer to, after the ex-health secretary said he had used a break to uncover new evidence of a phone call between himself and Boris Johnson.
The MP claimed his phone call with Mr Johnson on 28 February 2020 was the moment government “really started to come into action”, and claimed that had his own “doctrine” been followed, the first lockdown would have come three weeks earlier – saving 90 per cent of those who died in the first wave.
But Dominic Cummings claimed Matt Hancock was “flat out lying” to the Covid inquiry by claiming he pressed the prime minister for a lockdown on 13 March, and claimed to have “physically stopped” Mr Hancock coming to a meeting the following day because he “was bull****ting everybody about herd immunity”.
In an escalating war of words, Mr Hancock claimed to the inqury that Mr Cummings was a “malign influence” who created a toxic “culture of fear”.
ICYMI: Matt Hancock not told about Eat Out to Help Out
Matt Hancock was not told about Eat Out to Help Out until the day the scheme was announced, by which time it was a “done deal”, he told the inquiry yesterday.
He joins leading government scientists in not being told in advance about Rishi Sunak’s scheme – when he was chancellor – to revive the hospitality industry in the summer of 2020.
Mr Hancock, who was health secretary at the time, said he learned about the scheme in the Cabinet meeting on the morning it was announced.
The plan formed part of Mr Sunak’s summer economic update on July 8 2020, and provided 50% off the cost of food and/or non-alcoholic drinks.
Mr Hancock told the inquiry: “I didn’t know about the Eat Out to Help Out scheme until the Cabinet meeting on the morning of its announcement.”
Recap: What was in Matt Hancock’s testimony on Thursday?
Our political correspondent Archie Mitchell has this quick round-up of today’s events:
- Matt Hancock accused Dominic Cummings of fostering a “culture of fear” which hamstrung the government’s response to the pandemic
- The former health secretary denied having lied his way through the pandemic, saying there was “no evidence” to back up claims he was dishonest – instead pointing the finger at Mr Cummings for creating a “toxic” culture
- He confirmed claims that Mr Cummings exerted “too great an influence” on Mr Johnson, even accusing the adviser of making a “power grab”
- He accused Mr Cummings of lying to the official probe into the pandemic
- Mr Hancock denied having sought to play God during the pandemic, after the former chief of the NHS said he wanted to “decide who lived and who died”
- He said Britain would have saved “many, many lives” by locking down three weeks earlier
- And Mr Hancock admitted he was not reading minutes of Sage meetings until February
Hancock: 'I didn’t think there was a trade-off between health and economy
Asked whether Boris Johnson had a “consistent approach” during debates over “opening up” after the first lockdown, Matt Hancock said yesterday: “I think it’s fair to say that the prime minister felt strongly the arguments for the protection of health and the arguments for liberty and the protection of the economy.
“My particular beef was that I didn’t think there was a trade off at all. And it wasn’t an either or, you couldn’t choose between either.
“And my intense frustration was that economists at the Treasury, and elsewhere, couldn’t see that that although you could protect the economy by not locking down this week or next week, the second round consequence of that would be a firmer, more economically damaging lockdown in the future.
“And I couldn’t get them to see it, it was deeply frustrating that it was against the economic interest as well as against the health interest to avoid the action that was necessary.”
He added: “Late August was frustrating because in July, the prime minister had been extremely concerned that there was a second wave, and it’s reflected in the various communications and then came back from holiday and was much more concerned with not locking down and I found that a problem.”
Full report: Matt Hancock insists he’s not a liar and blames allegations on ‘toxic’ Dominic Cummings
Matt Hancock launched an extraordinary fightback against claims by Dominic Cummings that had “lied his way through the pandemic” and “killed people”.
In a highly anticipated hearing at the Covid inquiry, the former health secretary attacked Mr Cummings as a “malign actor” in Downing Street who had fostered a “culture of fear” across government.
And he denied being a liar, instead pointing the finger at Mr Cummings for creating a “toxic culture” in which ministers and officials sought to blame each other for Covid-era mistakes.
Mr Hancock said Mr Cummings, Boris Johnson’s top aide during the pandemic, had “abused” staff across Whitehall. And, extraordinarily, he went on to accuse Mr Cummings of himself lying to the official Covid-19 Inquiry.
Our political correspondent Archie Mitchell has the full report here:
Hancock says he did not support ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown
The former health secretary said: “I was in favour of tougher measures that would get R below one, especially in the areas where cases were highest.
“I was I was not convinced by the circuit breaker proposal on two grounds: the first is it’s effectively just a short lockdown and if you put it in for two weeks, I could see why in theory, if for two weeks no human would come into contact with any other human then the case numbers would drop dramatically.
“But in the real world that isn’t how life works. For instance, in hospitals and care homes, people have to interact.
“And secondly, the political impact of repeat the circuit breakers would have been to lose the confidence of those who we needed to have on board to make it happen.
“And I thought we would I thought that therefore a circuit breaker was not the best approach because basically rates would just shoot up afterwards. That is what happened when they tried one in Wales.”
He added: “My position was to argue first and foremost for tougher local lockdowns and the tier system with a stronger top tier.
“And I first put that forward at the end of August to my own team and it was very frustrating that it took me a month to get that policy in place, even more frustrating was that the top tier was not enough to get R below one and therefore not effective for the task. That was deeply frustrating.
“The second thing was where national measures like the rule of six were proposed. I was an enthusiastic supporter.”
Hancock claims he kept concerns about Eat Out to Help Out scheme ‘out of the news'
Matt Hancock kept concerns about the Eat Out to Help Out scheme “out of the news” as he believes government is a “team effort”, he told the Covid inquiry.
The probe was shown a WhatsApp exchange from August 2020 between the former health secretary and Cabinet Secretary Simon Case.
Mr Hancock wrote: “Just want to let you know directly that we have had lots of feedback that Eat Out to Help Out is causing problems in our intervention areas. I’ve kept it out of the news but it’s serious. So please please lets not allow the economic success of the scheme to lead to its extension.”
Mr Case replied: “Have you told Rishi? I don’t think he can afford to extend it!” Mr Hancock wrote: “Yes we’ve told Treasury - we’ve been protecting them in the comms and thankfully it hasn’t bubbled up.”
When asked about the exchange by inquiry counsel Hugo Keith, Mr Hancock said he was “being encouraged by various journalists” who presumed he was against the scheme.
“But I believe that government is a team effort. And so I didn’t want that to become a row in public,” he added. “You can see, during the whole pandemic, the corrosive effects of leaks.”
Hancock: Officials were ‘actively working against’ my plans to ramp up testing
Matt Hancock said that the people at the “centre” were “actively working against” his plans to ramp up testing in the early days of the pandemic.
Asked about his plans to ramp up testing from 10,000 a day at the end of March 2020, to 100,000 a day at the end of April, he said: “I now know that there were people actively working against me on it in the centre, which is appalling.”
He added: “What Simon Case described to me as ‘the long screwdriver’, which is relatively junior people in No 10 trying to go into the testing programme at a level too far down, too low, and try and issue diktats was deeply unhelpful over this period. And following proper lines of accountability would have been much more effective.
“But that’s that wasn’t quite what I meant, what I meant was the criticism that instead of going for 100,000 tests, there were other things tests could have been used for is is wrong, and wrong in logic, because we needed the tests. Of course we also needed to work out what we were going to use the tests for and that was essentially a clinical decision.
“But what I needed to do from when I took over the responsibility for testing in the middle of on March 17 was drive the system, galvanise the system as somebody put it quite rightly, and announcing a target - even though I didn’t know that we could hit it, which is unusual in government ... normally people only do things they’re pretty sure they can achieve. That was absolutely critical to driving the expansion of testing, which was so necessary in the rest of the response.
“It is of course it’s frustrating to me that, in so doing and in in taking that approach, obviously some people were upset by it ... it baffles me why people were against the expansion of testing in that way.”
Hancock says he wasn’t told about Eat Out to Help Out scheme
Matt Hancock has said he was not told in advance about Rishi Sunak’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme – echoing the host of top government scientists and medics who also told the inquiry last week of being blindsided by it.
Asked whether he knew in advance about it, the ex-health secretary said: “No. Not ahead of its announcement on the 8th of July. In fact cases were still falling at that point ... I didn’t know about the Eat Out to Help Out scheme until the Cabinet meeting on the morning of its announcement.
“And it was one of a package of loosenings. We were doing a number of things to bring back a bit of freedom over the summer.”
Mr Hancock said he didn’t know when asked what view he would have offered on the scheme as health secretary, to which Hugo Keith said: “Well, Mr Hancock. You’ve told the inquiry that there is in this debate between caution and allowing release – and it’s a difficult debate – a public health view, which you as the secretary of state are plainly on the side of caution, because that’s your job.”
The MP replied: “What mattered in the opening then was that there wasn’t overall too much. And in the end there was overall too much. Which individual items of opening you did or didn’t do is second order compared to the overall amount of openings.”
Hancock: No 10 told me not to say restrictions would be needed until vaccine arrived
Matt Hancock has said he was told by No 10 in summer 2020 not to say that Covid restrictions would be needed until the arrival of a vaccine – by which point he claims he was “confident” that a vaccine would work.
Asked to what extent his concerns about easing lockdown measures too soon in summer 2020 were heard and reflected in the government’s actions, he said: “They were heard, and they were reflected I guess in as much as there might have been more opening had I not made these arguments.
“My entire strategy at this point was to try to keep R below 1. I was completely alongside Chris Whitty at this point on this strategy, which was: summer is the best time to release, if R goes a bit above 1 over the summer, not the end of the world so long as cases are very low, but then we’ll have to take action in the early autumn to get it down again’.
“But the criticial thing is to keep it under control. And in this period I articulated what I regarded as the government’s strategy, which was: ‘we suppress the virus until a vaccine can make us safe’.”
He claimed that, “after articulating that strategy a few times”, he “then got asked by No 10 not to say it because we didn’t know we’d get a vaccine. But I was confident by this point that we would get one – and anyway I couldn’t see any other way through this without far too many deaths.”
Hancock ‘concerned’ UK’s testing system would struggle to be revived if needed
Matt Hancock has said that he was “concerned” that testing capabilities set up during the pandemic would struggle to be stood up again if needed.
Calling for the UK to spend more on health security, the ex-health secretary said: “That is what I’m concerned about.”
“For instance, recently one of the major labs was put on the market. I think it will be that better if it were mothballed and ready to go at the flick of a switch.”
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2023-12-01 04:00:00Z
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