Covid inquiry – live: George Osborne claims austerity had ‘positive’ effect on UK’s ability to withstand Covid

George Osborne is giving evidence to the Covid inquiry today

David Cameron tells Covid Inquiry his government spent more time ‘on pandemic flu’

Austerity had a “positive” effect on the UK’s ability to withstand the Covid-19 pandemic, former chancellor George Osborne has claimed.

In his witness statement submitted to the Covid inquiry, Mr Osborne said austerity had a positive effect because it meant public finances recovered.

“Reducing the deficit and placing debt as a percentage of GDP on a downward path was also essential to rebuild fiscal space to provide scope to respond to future economic shocks,” Mr Osborne said.

“I have no doubt that taking those steps to repair the UK’s public finances in the years following the financial crisis of 2008/09 had a material and positive effect on the UK’s ability to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic,” he continued.

George Osborne is giving evidence to the Covid inquiry today after a doctor’s union said the former chancellor must be “taken to task” over austerity-era decisions that “left us so unprepared” for the pandemic.

It comes after David Cameron said he is “desperately sorry” for the loss of life during the pandemic on Monday.

Key Points

• George Osborne gives evidence at Covid inquiry
• Osborne 'completely rejects' austerity resulted in depleted health and social care
• George Osborne claims austerity had ‘positive’ effect on UK’s ability to withstand Covid
• There was no planning for a lockdown, says Osborne
• ‘Mistake not to look at other types of pandemic,’ says David Cameron

[19 June 2023 12:45 · Martha Mchardy]

Who is in charge of keeping the country safe?

Asked who is in charge of keeping the country safe, Mr Cameron said: “The Prime Minister is always in charge of keeping the country safe and under reforms the Prime Minister was much more actively involved because he was chairing the National Security Council, The National Security Adviser was appointed by him and reported to him, and in my case, I’d set up a specific subcommittee on threats, hazards and resilience that looked exactly at this area with a highly capable minister in.

“I’m sure there are further improvements we can make and the government has announced some, which seemed to me sensible with the proviso that I made, but at the pinnacle of it must be the Prime Minister because from all my experience of chairing Cobras (meetings), whether it was during terrorist problems, or Fukushima nuclear disasters, or Ebola or anything else, the system works extremely well, but the system works better when the Prime Minister is in the chair, asking questions driving changes, and making sure decisions are made. So my answer is it’s the Prime Minister.”

[19 June 2023 12:45 · Martha Mchardy]

Cameron ‘desperately sorry’ about loss of life during pandemic

Former prime minister David Cameron said he is “desperately sorry” for the loss of life during the pandemic.

“I’m desperately sorry about the loss of life,” he said. “So many people have lost people that are close to them.

“And there’s been a lot of heartbreak and obviously that continues, and people often suffered in all sorts of ways through the pandemic and that’s why this inquiry is, is so important.”

He added: “I tried to be as frank as I can and as open as I can about the things my government did that helped put in place the right architecture for looking at these threats.”

[19 June 2023 12:44 · Martha Mchardy]

Cameron: ‘I would have granted funding for 3 months of PPE supplies for every hosiptal if I’d been asked’

David Cameron said he would have granted funding for three months of personal protective equipment (PPE) for every hospital if he had been asked.

The former prime minister told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry “a lot of things would have followed” if the assumptions on pandemic planning had been challenged.

“In Jeremy Hunt’s evidence hospitals in Hong Kong had to have three months of PPE supplies,” he said.

“I was never asked, ‘Can we have funding for three months of PPE supplies for every hospital?’

“But had I been asked we would’ve granted it, that’s not expensive, that’s not a huge commitment.

“That comes out of planning for the right sort of pandemic, so all these questions about economic policy, we can have an argument about was it the right economic policy or the wrong... I think it was the right economic policy...

“But the real problem was time spent quizzing the experts on what potential pandemics were coming and preparing for those in the right way.”

[19 June 2023 12:42 · Martha Mchardy]

UK did more than other countries when it came to pandemic planning, says Cameron

David Cameron said the UK did more than other countries when it came to pandemic planning.

“The problem was that when pandemics were looked at, there was too much emphasis on pandemic flu, and when other pandemics were looked at, including Ebola, including MERS, they tended to be high fatality but low infection,” he said.

“And you know, the regret ... is more questions weren’t asked about the sort of pandemic that we faced.

“But I think many other countries are in the same boat of not knowing what was coming.

“But I would argue we did more than many to try and scan the horizon, to try and plan - we did act on Ebola. We did carry out these exercises. We did try to change some of the international dynamic about these things and we planned and prepared in accordance with that.”

[19 June 2023 12:27 · Martha Mchardy]

David Cameron is now being asked questions by a representative to the Scottish Covid Bereaved Families.

[19 June 2023 12:26 · Martha Mchardy]

Watch: David Cameron tells Covid Inquiry his government spent more time ‘on pandemic flu’

[19 June 2023 12:25 · Martha Mchardy]

Jeremy Hunt had ‘considerable concerns’ about structural problems with NHS capacity and funding

Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt had ‘considerable concerns’ about the structural problems with NHS capacity and funding, his witness statement revealed.

Mr Cameron called Mr Hunt a “very capable” health secretary and defended the record of the government in getting finances under control.

He said: “I will absolutely defend the record of the government in both getting control of the finances and increasing funding for the health service at the same time.”

[19 June 2023 12:22 · Martha Mchardy]

David Cameron was asked whether the Government should have implemented the lessons learned from exercise Cygnus by January 2020.

Exercise Cygnus was a three-day simulation exercise carried out by the UK Government in October 2016 to estimate the impact of a hypothetical influenza pandemic on the UK.

He told the Covid-19 inquiry: “I don’t really want to comment on my successors but, I mean, you would hope so. I’ve thought a lot about this because, having been back through all the paperwork and everything, I haven’t found any moment when I was asked or the Treasury was asked to approve sort of surge capacity for PPE supplies or anything like that.

“I think that’s because there wasn’t enough attention on the sort of pandemic that we ultimately experienced, but... these are, as you say, are quite clear, and I think that the Treasury... money was tight and we made difficult decisions about public spending, when we did need to spend money on important priorities, when we had to spend money on ebola, we did and we would.”

The inquiry heard that exercise Alice made recommendations on needing a plan for scaling up testing capacity, for isolation and self-isolation options, for asymptomatic transmission and issues with the provision of PPE.

Mr Cameron was asked whether these matters were addressed during his time in office, to which he replied: “What I know is that there was capacity for isolation, when we had the ebola outbreak in Africa, and obviously there were some cases in the UK.

“But you know, I would say that the problem with Alice was that it was a Mers outbreak with a very high degree of mortality - 35% mortality - but a very low caseload.

“And so, again, that wasn’t anywhere close to the sort of pandemic we then actually experienced.”

[19 June 2023 12:18 · Martha Mchardy]

Cameron dismisses claim health spending ‘inadequate'

David Cameron has dismissed claims the health budget over the time of his government was “inadequate”.

“Do you accept that the health budgets over the time of your government were inadequate and led to the depletion of its ability to provide an adequate service?” asked Kate Blackwell KC.

“I don’t accept that,” said Mr Cameron, adding it was necessary to get the budget deficit down.

“Making these difficult choices about spending was - it wasn’t a sort of option that was picked out of thin air. I believed and I still believe it was absolutely essential to get the British economy and British public finances back to health so you can cope with a future crisis.”

[19 June 2023 12:11 · Martha Mchardy]

Questions over pandemic school closures ‘not asked,’ says Cameron

Mr Cameron said the pandemic preparedness plan in place by his government “didn’t go into things like school closures”.

He said: “The point is, during my time in office, there were investigations into service to SARS, and MERS and other types of pandemic including Ebola, but there wasn’t one into a highly transmissible Coronavirus style pandemic like we had. And so these questions weren’t asked”.

He said that the prospect of school closure was first raised after he left office.

Challenged on this, Mr Cameron added: “I haven’t seen a report while I was in office, saying that sort of planning should be done because the pandemic preparedness plan - which had been worked up by the previous government and then amended and improved and enhanced during my time in office - there were lots of recommendations made and all sorts of things about stockpiles of Tamiflu and all the rest of it, but it didn’t go into things like school closures.”