Covid inquiry live: Hancock ‘wanted to decide who should live or die if NHS became overwhelmed’

Lord Simon Stevens says Cabinet ministers ‘avoided’ Cobra meetings chaired by then-health secretary

Covid inquiry roundup: Lee Cain and Dominic Cummings provide worrying insight into No 10

Ex-health secretary Matt Hancock believed that he – rather than doctors or the public – should decide “who should live and who should die” if hospitals became overwhelmed with Covid patients, the former NHS chief executive has said.

Lord Simon Stevens said that “fortunately this horrible dilemma never crystallised”, as he told the Covid inquiry on Thursday that it would have to look “very carefully” at the issue of asymptomatic Covid patients being discharged from hospitals into care homes.

Meanwhile, Mr Hancock, who was health secretary at the start of the Covid outbreak, told Public Health England’s then medical director Yvonne Doyle “not to patronise him” when she warned that the virus could be in the UK, she told the inquiry.

She said she was barred from doing media interviews for a time after that, and apologised to him, even though she had been telling the truth.

It comes a day after former top civil servant and ethics chief Helen MacNamara said the “female perspective” was missed during the pandemic as she condemned a “toxic” and “macho” culture at the highest levels of Mr Johnson’s government.

Key Points

• Matt Hancock ‘wanted to choose who lived or died if NHS overwhelmed'
• Revealed: Ministers braced for 840,000 Covid deaths
• Hancock told medical chief not to ‘patronise’ him by telling truth
• Watch: Ministers ‘avoided’ Cobra meetings chaired by Matt Hancock

[2 November 2023 15:09 · Andy Gregory]

Watch: Boris Johnson left meeting on Covid without mentioning disease

[2 November 2023 15:00 · Archie Mitchell]

Johnson ‘did not understand difference between minimising mortality and minimising overall spread’

Lord Sedwill wrote an email to Sir Christopher Wormald saying Boris Johnson and other ministers did not understand the distinction between “minimising mortality” from Covid and “not trying to stop most people getting it”.

The then cabinet secretary told the health department’s top civil servant: “Like chicken pox we want people to get it and develop herd immunity before the next wave.”

Sir Christopher replied: “Exactly right.”

[2 November 2023 14:38 · Archie Mitchell]

Sir Christopher Wormald was concerned about ‘Iraq-style’ mixing of factual and political Covid advice

Sir Christopher Wormald has told the Covid inquiry he was concerned about the mixing of factual and political advice in the run up to Covid, as happened in the run up to the Iraq war.

The former Department of Health permanent secretary raised concerns on 18 March 2020, that political special advisers were attending Sage meetings.

Sir Christopher told the Covid inquiry the advice coming out of the group changed without “an explanation of new data”.

He said: “I was concerned about the purity of the sage advice, which was going to the prime minister because Spads (special advisers) were available.

“One of the key findings of the various reports around the Iraq war, including the Chilcott one, was the mixing up of the technical factual advice and the political advice.”

[2 November 2023 14:33 · Andy Gregory]

No consideration given to testing until ‘much later’ than February, Covid inquiry

Our political correspondent Archie Mitchell reports:

Sir Christopher Wormald has admitted there was “no practical or policy consideration” about a test and trace system until “very much later” than a February 2020 meeting.

In the end, NHS Test and Trace in England was launched on 28 May 2020.

Sir Christopher, then permanent secretary at the Department of Health, said other countries such as Germany had “much bigger” testing capacity than the UK but “did not succeed in using testing to stop the virus getting in”.

[2 November 2023 14:27 · Archie Mitchell]

Boris Johnson left meeting on Covid without mentioning disease

Boris Johnson left a meeting with the health department at which the potential for the pandemic to reach the UK was discussed, but wrote afterward that the discussion focused on NHS objectives and manifesto commitments, the Covid inquiry has heard.

The Covid inquiry’s lead counsel Hugo Keith KC asked the former health department permanent secretary Sir Christopher Wormald why “so little time” was devoted to the pandemic.

“I came out of the meeting thinking that the message is about how serious this was and what the likely death toll would be had been delivered,” Sir Christopher said.

But asked whether the letter from Downing Street mentioned the potential death rates, which were estimated at up to 300,000, Sir Christopher said: “No, it doesn’t”.

[2 November 2023 14:15 · Andy Gregory]

Watch: Matt Hancock was ‘overpromising, not lying’, says top civil servant

[2 November 2023 14:09 · Archie Mitchell]

DHSC knew UK would face pandemic if virus left China, says Sir Christopher Wormald

The Department of Health knew that, if Covid escaped China, then there would be a pandemic which would hit the UK, Sir Christopher Wormald has confirmed.

The minutes of a Cobra meeting in January 2020 showed government scientists were operating on two “reasonable worst case scenarios”.

One was that the spread of Covid was confined to China, the other was that it was not, in which the chief medical officer said it would impact the UK.

Inquiry lead counsel Hugo Keith KC asked if Sir Christopher was “surprised” that there was no follow up debate about which measures should be considered.

But Sir Christopher, who was permanent secretary at the health department at the time, said the government had a plan to deal with a flu pandemic.

[2 November 2023 13:50 · Andy Gregory]

Pandemic had real lasting impact on brain health in over-50s, research says

Lockdown and other restrictions during the pandemic have had a “real lasting impact” on the brain health of people over the age of 50, regardless of whether or not they caught Covid, a study has found.

Researchers found cognitive function and working memory in older people, both in those who had caught Covid and those who had not, declined more rapidly during the pandemic.

My colleague Jabed Ahmed has more in this report:

[2 November 2023 13:33 · Andy Gregory]

Excl: Sunak warned government’s ageing IT systems are ‘accident waiting to happen’

Away from the Covid inquiry for a moment, Rishi Sunak has been warned the government’s ageing computer systems are an “accident waiting to happen” – as ministers admitted they do not know the cost of patching up old IT.

Labour has urged the Tory government to “come clean” on work going on to fix up systems from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s – warning they could be increasingly vulnerable to cyber-attack.

Our political correspondent Adam Forrest has more in this exclusive report:

[2 November 2023 13:14 · Andy Gregory]

Top health civil servant hits out at ‘blame game’ in government

The top civil servant in the Department of Health said that energy focused on the “blame game” in government would have been “better spent solving the problems the pandemic was bringing”.

Sir Christopher Wormald told inquiry lead counsel Hugo Keith KC that Matt Hancock believed it was important to be “optimistic and aspirational”, adding he was not aware himself of the extent of views about the then-health secretary’s truth-telling.

“There were a lot of people who said that the secretary of state was over-optimistic about what would happen and over-promised on what could be delivered,” Sir Christopher said. “That was said really quite a lot. I think it was a very small number of people who said that he was actually telling untruths.”

“He was always clear that he was doing it for a positive reason. So setting a very aspirational target, not necessarily expecting to hit it, but to galvanise the system to do more. Whether that’s a good thing to do or not, that is a matter of perception.”

Sir Christopher acknowledged that mistrust between Number 10, the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health would have been damaging.

“The amount of time and energy that seemed to be taken up very early in the pandemic on the blame game – that energy would clearly have been better spent solving the problems the pandemic was bringing.”