Key events
Hancock says none of his predecessors had had to deal with a pandemic like this.
Keith says Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary at the time, said the Department of Health and Social Care was not resourced to deal with this. Sedwill said it was “under par”, Keith says.
Hancock says Sedwill did not use the phrase under par.
But it was clear the DHSC would have more to do, Hancock says.
Keith says Hancock has provided a new witness statement to the inquiry which is 176 pages long. That will be published when he has finished giving evidence.
Hancock also submitted a supplementary statement, addressing some further questions, he says.
And Keith says they have read his Pandemic Diaries, the book written with Isabel Oakeshott. Keith says this was not a contemporaneous diary, but instead a book written after the event describing what happened day by day.
Lady Hallett, the inquiry chair, starts by apologising to Hancock for the fact that he has had to give evidence more than once.
He also appeared during module one, when the inquiry was looking at pandemic preparedness.
Here is our report of that hearing in June.
Matt Hancock starts giving evidence to Covid inquiry
The hearing is starting. Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, is taking the oath. And he’s going to be questioned by Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel for the inquiry.
Boris Johnson to give evidence to Covid inquiry all Wednesday and Thursday next week, inquiry says
Boris Johnson is due to give evidence to the Covid inquiry for two days next week, on Wednesday and Thursday, the inquiry has announced. He is the only witness scheduled for next week.
Dominic Cummings’ list of examples of when he says Hancock lied to No 10 about Covid
No witness has been more critical of Matt Hancock than Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser. In paragraph 508 of his witness statement Cummings gives a long list of times when he claims Hancock lied to No 10 about Covid arrangements.
What previous witnesses to Covid inquiry have said about Hancock
I was going to compile my own guide to the critical comments about Matt Hancock made by previous witnesses to the inquiry but, frankly, the list is so long that it would take quite a while. Luckily Dan Bloom and Noah Keate have down their own version for Politico’s London Playbook.
Hancock must now answer the Murder on the Orient Express-style procession of senior figures who’ve done him in. Greatest hits include Dominic Cummings calling him a “proven liar” … Helen MacNamara saying he’d say things in meetings that “we’d discover [weren’t] in fact the case” … Patrick Vallance saying he had a “habit” of saying things “without evidence to back them up” … Mark Sedwill texting that he needed removing to “save lives and protect the NHS” … Simon Case name-checking him in the government’s “weak team” … Manchester mayor Andy Burnham saying Hancock knew Tier 3 restrictions wouldn’t work when he imposed them … Simon Stevens saying he wanted to decide “who should live and who should die” … and Chris Wormald saying he “overpromised” (but not that he lied).
John Stevens at the Mirror has also got a longer version of the same list.
Matt Hancock appears at Covid inquiry
Good morning. With the possible exception of Boris Johnson, no one has received as much criticism from witnesses giving evidence to the Covid inquiry as Matt Hancock, who was health secretary for the first 15 months of the pandemic, including all three lockdowns. He has a lot to answer for and the inquiry has set aside a day and a half for his evidence.
As Toby Helm reported in the Observer at the weekend, Hancock’s allies believe he will hit back by arguing that his efforts to get No 10 to take Covid more seriously in early 2020 were ignored. Toby says:
Matt Hancock and his officials bombarded Downing Street with early warnings about Covid-19 but were treated with ridicule and contempt, according to senior Whitehall figures, who believe that the former health secretary is unfairly being made a scapegoat by civil servants and scientists during the official inquiry into the pandemic.
Attempts by the Department of Health, in mid to late January 2020, to raise the alarm were dismissed out of hand by senior staff working for the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, because they believed Hancock was mainly seeking publicity and exaggerating the dangers, the insiders say.
One with detailed knowledge of events at the time told the Observer: “The DoH was pushing really hard and the Cabinet Office and Downing Street were saying :‘Look, we’ve just had an election and we have got to get Brexit done: could you and your pandemic just fuck off and stop irritating us.’ They totally trivialised it and did not want to engage.”
I will be focusing on Hancock’s evidence for most of the day, but other politics will get a look-in too. Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Rishi Sunak is on a visit in Guildford.
9am: Gordon Brown, the former Labour PM, speaks at a Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Pay conference in Edinburgh.
10am: Matt Hancock gives evidence to the Covid inquiry. The hearing is scheduled to run all day and continue tomorrow.
10am: Alex Salmond, the former Scottish first minister who now leads the Alba party, is holding a press conference.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
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