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Tory MP Paul Bristow has been sacked from his government job after breaking ranks to publicly urge Rishi Sunak to push for a “permanent ceasefire” in Gaza, PA Media reports. PA says:

Bristow, a parliamentary private secretatary at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, had written to the prime minister saying it would save lives.

He has said that Palestinian civilians are facing a “collective punishment” as a result of Israel’s siege and airstrikes campaign in the wake of Hamas’s bloodshed.

Downing Street said that the MP for Peterborough has been asked to leave his job as a parliamentary private secretary for breaking rank.

A No 10 spokesperson said: “Paul Bristow has been asked to leave his post in government following comments that were not consistent with the principles of collective responsibility.”

Much has been made of the splits in Labour over Sir Keir Starmer’s position on the conflict between Israel and Gaza but the sacking is evidence of Tory divisions too.

Bristow’s letter, dated Thursday, appears to have been deleted from his website but remains on Facebook.

He wrote that he was “deeply briefed by the heart-breaking and devastating humanitarian crisis” unfolding in Gaza, having spoken with constituents and meeting with the Peterborough Joint Mosques Council.

He wrote that he was “deeply briefed by the heart-breaking and devastating humanitarian crisis” unfolding in Gaza, having spoken with constituents and meeting with the Peterborough Joint Mosques Council.

The MP said he welcomed Sunak calling for what he has termed “specific pauses” in the fighting to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, home to more than two million people.

But Bristow added: “A permanent ceasefire would save lives and allow for a continued column of humanitarian aid [to] reach the people who need it the most.”

Anna Morris, counsel for the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice, asks about a note in Shafi’s notebook saying:

Trade off -> short sharp peak good [for the] economy

long peak good for health system

Shafi says he cannot remember who said that. He was just summarising a view expressed in a meeting.

Morris puts it to him that this suggests a binary choice, and that in fact what was good for health might be good for the economy too.

Shafi says that increasingly people did think like that.

And that’s the end of today’s session.

Hugo Keith KC said that at one point in his notebook Imran Shafi referred to the “Eat out to help out” scheme as “Eat out to help out the virus”.

This was the Treasury scheme subsidising meals out in August 2020. Rishi Sunak launched the scheme to boost the hospitality industry, but subsequent evidence showed that it encouraged the spread of the virus.

Keith asked if it was Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, who used the term. Shafi confirmed that was correct.

Heather Hallett, the chair, calls a short break. She says they will definitely finish today by 5.10pm.

Keith says Johnson held meetings or talks with Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, on 19 and 20 March. He shows Shafi an extract from his notebook with an account of one of these meetings. It says:

“We’re killing the patient to tackle the tumour”

Large ppl [numbers of people] who will die – why are we destroying economy for people who will die anyway soon

Keith asks who said those words.

Shafi says he is not sure, but he thinks it was Johnson.

Keith asks Shafi to confirm that Boris Johnson actively resisted ordering a lockdown.

Shafi says Johnson did not want a lockdown.

Q: He thought the stay-at-home order on 16 March would suffice?

Shafi says that was the advice Johnson was getting. But it assumed the 16 March advice would be properly followed. It became clear that that was not the case.

Johnson was worried about the negative impact of a lockdown, Shafi says.

Keith says a government paper from 9 March 2020 showed that the NHS would be overwhelmed by Covid cases on current projections.

Q; Was any more information needed to justify raising the alarm?

No, says Shafi.

Q: But did the government pull the alarm cord?

No, says Shafi.

He says that, as a relatively junior official, it was difficult for him to challenge government strategy.

Keith says Shafi kept contemporaneous notes. At the hearing he shows a page from the notebook, dated 28 February. In a note of what the PM said, Shafi wrote “biggest damage done by overreaction”.

Keith is now showing a note that was shown to Boris Johnson, dated 28 February, saying Covid was “increasingly likely to become a global pandemic”. It also said that based on existing assumptions for a severe flu pandemic, up to 520,000 people could die in a reasonable worst case scenario.

Q: In the light of this warning, how reasonable was it to stress the need not to over-react (Boris Johnson’s earlier view – see 2.49pm)?

Shafi says that approach looked a lot less valid by 28 February.

Keith says in late February Shafi wrote an email saying he wanted to expose the PM to the decisions he might have to take.

Q: At that point, had the government taken insufficient precautions?

Shafi says he did not know that at that point. He did not know how much work had been done elsewhere. It was when they asked about the planning, and found how little work had been done, that they realised there was a problem.

Keith asks about the period in mid-February when Johnson was not getting emails or notes about Covid. See 12.43pm.

Shafi says Johnson was on leave for some of this period.

Q: Do you accept that the lack of communication with the PM at this point was unfortunate?

Shafi says he does not know what conversations Johnson was having with other people at this point.

With hindsight, they should have spent every day in February preparing for Covid, he says.

UPDATE: Keith said:

Do you accept that, given that this was a crisis or we were on the edge of a crisis concerning a fatal viral pandemic, that the lack of communication with the prime minister for those 10 days, a bare month before the lockdown, was in hindsight rather unfortunate?

And Shafi replied:

I don’t know what conversations he had with other people, I think that’s something you’d need to ask him. I think, in hindsight, I think it’s unfortunate that we didn’t spend every day in February focused on all the detailed operational plans.

Keith asks about a Cobra meeting on 26 February. At this meeting, Prof Sir Jonathan Van-Tam said sustained person-to-person transmission was happening in Italy, from which many people travelled to the UK.

At that meeting 800,000 excess deaths was the reasonable worst-case scenario.

Keith says by this point (26 February) all the dots were joined up. It should have been clear it was coming to the UK.

Shafi says at that point there was still some uncertainty about whether the pandemic would hit the UK. But he says “the alarm bells should have been ringing”.

Keith makes it clear that he is not blaming Shafi for the delay. He is saying Shafi personally was pressing for action.

It was another two and a half weeks from 26 February before Johnson ordered people to stay at home (on 16 March) and three and a half weeks before the full lockdown was ordered (on 23 March).

The hearing has resumed.

Imran Shafi, Boris Johnson’s private secretary for public services, says that if No 10 had felt that suppression was a viable strategy at the start, more emphasis might have been put on test and trace.

Hugo Keith KC says test and trace is not necessary for flu, because people show symptoms, making it unnecessary. But with Covid it is necessary, because some people are asymptomatic.

Shafi says it would not have been possible to scale up test-and-trace capacity in time.