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Whitty says Sage was not the only route by which scientific advice was provided to government. It is important to stress that, he says. He says the government had many other sources of advice.

Q: In your witness statement, you says as co-chair of Sage you are likely to be biased in its favour. Were you aware of how other countries get scientific advice?

Whitty says he was well aware of how other countries do this.

In general, the UK system of integration of science into government is still short of where it should be, by “quite some distance”, but it is better than in some other countries, he says.

The Sage system “had some pluses and minuses”.

But he could not see another system that made him think “if only we had that, we would be in a much better shape”.

Q: There is a tension between having a body small enough to take decisions, but large enough to represent a wide range of views.

Whitty says, at first, it was too Sage. Patrick Vallance recognised that and responded. Arguable it later got too large, Whitty says.

He says it is important to stress Sage is not a fixed body. People come on to it and go off it, depending on what the problem is.

Whitty says the countries that could scale up testing quickly, like South Korea, had invested in that capacity. He says South Korea had had a bad experience with Mers.

For a country like the UK, it was much harder, he says.

Q: Were you consulted on the decision to disband Public Health England?

Whitty says he was just told this was happening. He thought PHE had acted professionally.

Whitty says the CMOs for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland sometimes gave collective advice when they wanted to give a collective view on something important.

Q: Were there any significant scientific disagreements between you?

Not that he can recall, says Whitty.

But he says they sometimes had to think about things quite hard. Sometimes they were 49%/51% calls.

The most difficult decisions were about borders, he says.

Q: There have been claims there was not proper collaborationg between the four nations.

Whitty says the CMOs, and the public agencies, did a lot together. And the presidents of the medical colleges worked together.

But, he says, that does not mean that at an operational and political level there weren’t differences.

Keith asks Whitty about a comment he gave in a speech on 12 February 2020. He shows it to the inquiry.

Whitty defends what he was saying.

Keith says Whitty was talking about the risk of spending money on something that might not happen. He suggests that would be overreaction.

Whitty says the precautionary principle is understood.

Where there are no downsides, the precautionary principle justifies acting; for example, telling people to wash their hands.

But that does not apply in cases where acting does have downsides, he says.

Whitty says doctors have to give advice on both sides of equation. If a patient needs an operation, even if a doctor thinks it is worthwhile, they have to give advice about the potential downsides, he says.

He suggests this influenced his thinking on advice about lockdown measures.

Q: To what extent did the need for data impact on your advice early on?

Whitty says, by the time Sage was giving advice, he was supporting the Sage advice.

From 16 March onwards, Sage was very clear about the need for action.

But, when you give advice, it is also important to acknowledge the downsides too, he says.

Q: There is a difference between accepting the downsides, and saying you should not overreact. Did you warn against overreacting?

Whitty says he was not deviating from the position of Sage.

The view of Sage was that, to avoid deaths, action was necessary.

But it was also clear that downsides would be involved.

He says ministers needed to know that. If they were not aware, there was a risk of them reversing course.

He says this approach was appropriate. Any doctor or civil servant would accept this was the correct thing to do.

Q: Did Sage itself warn against the dangers of overreacting from early January to early March?

Whitty says he does not think Sage would have used the phrase overreaction. It was about emphasising the downsides.

Q: The documentary evidence seems to suggest you were prominent in warning of the risk of overreacting. Is that fair?

Whitty says he rejects Keith’s characterisation of this as “overreaction” because that implies he thought the reaction should not happen. His concern was to make sure the downsides were understood.

I’ve rejected and I will continue to reject your characterisation of this as ‘overreaction’, because that implies that I thought that in a sense the action should not happen.

What I thought should happen is that people should be aware that without action very serious things would occur but the downsides of those actions should be made transparent.

I don’t consider that incorrect.

Q: Were you co-chair of Sage, or was Sir Patrick Vallance the lead chair?

Whitty says he and Vallance agreed that it was best to have a permanent chair. So Vallance chaired the meetings when he was there. But technically they were co-chairs.

Q: Did you try to form a common position on advice from Sage, and on technical advice to government?

Yes, says Whitty.

He says in one respect he was a member of Sage. He gave opinions in his own capacity.

But, once Sage had agreed a position, he saw it as his role to express the Sage position – not his own, personal view. Vallance also expressed the collective Sage view.

Q: Was it hard to ensure you were always singing from the same hymnsheet?

Whitty says the Sage process helped establish a common position. Where Sage did not consider a matter, he and Vallance tried to agree a common view before they advised the government.

Q: Was there a tension between you and Vallance? Jeremy Farrar said this in his book.

Whitty says Farrar, who is a colleague and a friend, had a book to sell. He says the differences between him and Vallance were small.

Q: Farrar in his book, and Vallance in his diary, say you were more cautious, and more inclined to wait until moving to measures.

Whitty says they should be “very careful of the narcissism of small differences”. The differences were very small.

But he was very clear that the impacts of measures such as cocooning (a precursor to lockdown) would be highest in areas of deprivation.

He says, with the benefit of hindsight, he thinks they went “a bit too late” in terms of introducing measures in the first wave.

He says he was probably further in the “let’s think through the disadvantages” camp as the impact of interventions was being considered.

UPDATE: Whitty said:

Well Sir Jeremy, who is a good friend and colleague, had a book to sell, and that made it more exciting, I’m told.

My own view was that actually the differences were extremely small

And the main one – and Sir Patrick, I thought put it very well – was that I saw as part of my role within Sage, in my first role as an individual, to reflect some of the very significant problems for particularly areas of deprivation, I saw for many years the actions that we were taking in terms of what was going to be advised to ministers to consider for what they did next.

And that I think that was an appropriate thing for me to do and Sir Patrick also thought it was appropriate.

Q: Did the system of international collaboration work well?

Whitty says, in the circumstances, it worked as well as could be expected.

Q: Can you give examples?

Whitty says, for every new wave of Covid, the first information came from the countries involved.

And he says, with the original Wuhan wave, they at first relied on Chinese science.

There were many groups. But they all involved sharing information.

When the UK had the Alpha wave (called the Kent variant at the time), it was the UK sharing its information with other countries.

Q: Was there no aspect on the pandemic on which you did not advise?

Whitty says he would not put it like that. He says he felt it important to advise on issues where advice from a scientist or doctor would be useful.

He says there was a limit to what they could do. There were only 20 people in his office, he said.

Q: But there were no issues on which you could not advise?

Whitty says quite often his office said they thought it was not right for them to advise on a particular matter.

Whitty says, as CMO (chief medical officer) for England, he matches what the CMOs do in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. But he says he also advises the government on health on UK matters, and as CMO for England he has certain international responsibilities.

He says, when Covid first emerged in January, Prof Jonathan Van-Tam led on the response. He was one of three deputy chief medical officers, and his responsibility was health protection. But, by the end of January, Whitty says he was leading on this issue

Keith is asking about the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), which is headed by Whitty.

Q: Did your ability to be CMO as well as CEO of NIHR help?

Whitty says overall this was beneficial. He was able to combine the strategy for medical research with strategy for Covid. But he says doing both roles meant he was “quite stretched”.

Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England and chief medical adviser for the UK, is giving evidence now.

Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel for the inquiry, is asking the questions.

Dame Heather Hallett, the chair, points out that Whitty has already given evidence. Here is a report of his evidence in module one, which looked at pandemic preparedness.

Keith starts by saying that, for module two, looking at how the government responded to the pandemic, Whitty has produced a corporate witness statement and a fourth personal one. These run to 340 pages, he says. He says Whitty has also given the inquiry hundreds of documents.

The UK government borrowed less than expected in the first seven months of the financial year as Jeremy Hunt puts the last-minute touches to a series of pre-election giveaways in his autumn statement tomorrow, Phillip Inman reports.

If you are one of those Conservative MPs who believe that the secret to electoral success is tax cuts (are there any Tory MPs who don’t?), then the splash headlines in this morning’s papers will be very welcome. Here are three of them from rightwing papers.

Laura Trott, the new chief secretary to the Treasury, was giving interviews this morning and she confirmed the papers were right to anticipate tax cuts. She told Times Radio:

We have turned a corner. Inflation has halved. That is really significant for people at home. We know how tough things have been.

Real wages are, for three months, now ahead of inflation – again, that’s really important to kind of making a difference to how people feel.

So we can now talk about tax cuts and focus on growth, and that is what we’re going to be doing.

In one of his witness statements published last night, Sir Patrick Vallance also said that he had considered resigning during Covid because of threats he was facing. As the BBC reports, Vallance said:

Like many others I received abuse and threats and I was concerned for the wellbeing and safety of my family.

At times those factors did lead me to question whether I should continue.

I also found people breaking the lockdown rules very difficult and considered what I should do in response, but decided that I would help most by continuing with my job.

Government accused of economic blackmail after omitting Northern Ireland from latest levelling up funding

Rory Carroll

The government has been accused of “economic blackmail” after omitting Northern Ireland from levelling up funding because of its political vacuum.

Michael Gove’s Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said yesterday the region would not receive anything from the latest allocation, which will fund 55 projects in England, Wales and Scotland. “Given the current absence of a working executive and assembly, the government is not proceeding with this round of the levelling up fund at this time,” it said.

Stormont collapsed in February 2022 when the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) walked out to protest post-Brexit trading arrangements that treat Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK.

Sammy Wilson, a DUP MP, said the funding cut was an “outrageous” attempt to blackmail the party into reviving power-sharing. He also accused the government of siphoning money to Conservative-held seats in England.

Conor Murphy, a Sinn Féin assembly member, said the decision was a “cynical attack on ordinary people” and that Northern Ireland was paying the price for the DUP’s “reckless boycott”.

Claire Hanna, an SDLP MP, said: “The Conservative government don’t ever need an excuse to under-invest in our region but the DUP have given them that cover on this particular fund.”

Northern Ireland received allocations in two previous rounds and was led to expect another allocation – the department placed advertisements in local media that used images of Belfast with the declaration “Levelling Up is here”.

Good morning. Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, and chief medical adviser for the UK, is giving evidence all day to the Covid inquiry. The session starts at 10am, but we have already had an insight into one of the points he might make from a witness statement from Sir Patrick Vallance published by the inquiry last night. In it, Vallance says Whitty regrets saying “fatigue” might stop people putting up with a long lockdown.

This was in one of three witness statements from Vallance published by the inquiry last night, after the government’s former chief scientific adviser finished giving evidence in person.

In his evidence Vallance said Whitty had initially been more reluctant than others to support an early lockdown at the start of the Covid crisis. This wasn’t a great secret because in those very early press conferences Whitty argued that, if the government were to introduce restrictions on what people could to too early, there was a danger that people would get tired of complying, and start reverting to normal behaviour, at a point where Covid was still a threat. This is what Vallance is referring to when he talks about Whitty introducing the concept of “behavioural fatigue”.

This later became highly controversial not just because it was wrong – people were willing to comply with lockdown restrictions for a long time (perhaps surprisingly) – but also because there does not seem to be much evidence to support the concept in the first place. Scientists on SPI-B (the Scientific Paendemic Insights group on Behaviour) subsequently said the idea did not come from them.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, and chief medical adviser for the UK, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry.

10.15am: Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, gives evidence to the Commons Treasury committee about the Bank’s monetary policy reports.

11.30am: No 10 holds a lobby briefing

After 3pm: David Cameron is due to speak in the Lords for the first time as foreign secretary in a debate on the trade (comprehensive and progressive agreement for Trans-Pacific partnership) bill.

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