Government wrong to ‘empower scientists’ on Covid lockdowns, says Rishi Sunak

Tory hopeful attacks top Sage advisers and shares fury over ‘nightmare’ schools closure

Conservative leadership hopeful Rishi Sunak has claimed scientists were handed too much power during the Covid pandemic as he attacked the government’s approach to lockdowns.

The former chancellor said he “wasn’t allowed to talk about the trade-off” of lockdowns during the early phases of the crisis – condemning the “fear narrative” which drove public messaging.

Mr Sunak suggested Boris Johnson let lockdown go on too long, and claimed the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) group advising the PM edited its minutes to hide dissenting opinions.

Sunak also said it was wrong to have closed schools during the crisis, revealing that he told fellow ministers it would be a “major nightmare” if children were kept at home.

“We shouldn’t have empowered the scientists in the way we did,” he told The Spectator magazine in an interview about his frustration with lockdown. “If you empower all these independent people, you’re screwed.”

He added: “And you have to acknowledge trade-offs from the beginning. If we’d done all of that, we could be in a very different place. We’d probably have made different decisions on things like schools.”

Mr Sunak claimed Sage removed some opinions from its final minutes, but said a Treasury official would listen to the meetings and brief him on the omissions.

“The Sage people didn’t realise for a very long time that there was a Treasury person on all their calls,” he said. “A lovely lady. She was great because it meant that she was sitting there, listening to their discussions.”

The senior Tory said he became “emotional” during fraught meetings with ministers and top scientists. “Those meetings were literally me around that table, just fighting. It was incredibly uncomfortable every single time.”

“I was like, ‘Forget about the economy – surely we can all agree that kids not being in school is a major nightmare.’ There was a big silence afterwards. It was the first time someone had said it. I was so furious.”

Sunaks said he and his Treasury shared their concerns about the government’s approach to messaging, arguing that it was “wrong to scare people” with posters showing people on ventilators.

“In every brief, we tried to say: let’s stop the ‘fear’ narrative. It was always wrong from the beginning. I constantly said it was wrong.”

Asked if Britain could have avoided lockdown during the pandemic, like Sweden, Sunak said: ‘I don’t know, but it could have been shorter. Different. Quicker.”

Education minister Will Quince – a Sunak supporter – suggested that he also believed school closures were a mistake when asked on LBC if he agreed with the Tory leadership contender’s criticism of lockdown policy.

“The government had to act on the information they had at the time,” said Quince. “So things like your closing schools with the information we now have, would we do it again? No, I don’t think we would.”

Sunak supporter Mark Harper MP, the former Tory chief whip, also backed the leadership contender’s claims that “dissenting voices were not allowed” during the pandemic.

Highlighting the impact of “locking” children out of schools, he told LBC: “Government was not being honest about that publicly. It was setting out that there were no choices, that you had to follow ‘The Science’, capitalised T, capitalised S, and dissenting voices were not allowed.”

But Lee Cain, the ex-Downing Street communications director who left alongside top strategist Dominic Cummings at the end of 2020, said Sunak’s views on lockdown were “simply wrong”,

He tweeted: “It would have been morally irresponsible of the government not to implement lockdown in spring 2020 – the failure to do so would have killed tens of thousands of people who survived Covid.”

It comes as Sunak prepares to go head-to-head with frontrunner Liz Truss once again in the penultimate hustings of the Tory leadership race in Norwich on Thursday.

Tory leadership hopefuls have been urged to reconsider their plans and bring in a “solidarity tax” of 1 per cent on all earners to help pay for extra support with soaring energy bills.

The Resolution Foundation said it was time for Truss and Sunak – who have promised tax cuts – to “think the unthinkable” and raise tax during the worsening cost of living crisis crisis.

The think tank said a 1 per cent hike in income tax on all rates – with 60 per cent paid by the wealthiest fifth of UK households – would raise £9.5bn a year for more support with gas and electricity bills.

The Department of Health has been contacted for comment.