Health News at Your Fingertips

Q: Do you think Cummings had too much influence on decision making in No 10?

Yes, says Hancock.

He says in February Cobra was meeting to deal with Covid.

But Cummings decided to circumvent these meeting by arranging for the key decisions to be taken at a different meeting taking place in his office, he says. He says some of the right people were at those meetings, but not all of them.

Q: Do you think Cummings’ role had a signficant impact on the smooth running of the government machine?

“Yes, of course,” says Hancock.

Q: How was this allowed to continue?

Hancock says this was “deeply, deeply frustrating”.

There was a structural problem – Cummings trying to take control of the meetings.

But there was also a cultural problem, he says. He suggests Cummings created a culture of fear. He says Cummings effectively got Sajid Javid sacked as chancellor in February.

Keith tries to close down this point, saying it is not relevant.

Hancock insists this is relevant. He explains:

It inculcated a culture of fear, whereas what we needed was a culture where everybody was brought to the table and given their heads to do their level best in a once in a generation crisis. The way to lead in a crisis like this is to give people the confidence to do what they think needs to happen. And it caused the opposite of that.

Keith asks why people like Dominic Cummings thought Hancock was a liar?

“I was not,” says Hancock. He says no one in his department has supported these false allegations.

And people did not say this to him at the time, he says.

Keith says the inquiry has no interest in the allegation that Johnson considered sacking Hancock, because it will not be possible to get to the truth of what happened.

Hancock says the inquiry could get to the truth of this matter if it wanted to.

He says the “toxic culture” in No 10 was essentially caused by Cummings.

He says Cummings made the situation unpleasant, and he made things unpleasant for his (Hancock’s) staff too.

But he just got on with things, he says.

Keith shows the inquiry minutes from a cabinet meeting on 11 March 2020 showing Matt Hancock as saying testing people who were asymptomatic would not work.

Hancock says he was talking at this point about the case for testing people as borders. Testing would not work because it would not pick up all cases, he suggests.

He says this is not the same as saying testing asymptomatic people might have value in other circumstances.

Dominic Cummings, who was Boris Johnson’s chief adviser for most of 2020, and who has been one of Hancock’s strongest critics, claims Hancock if lying to the inquiry about calling for a lockdown on Friday 13 2020. (See 11am.) He has put this on X.

Hancock flat out lying to Inquiry claiming he privately pushed for lockdown on 13th with PM – but admits there’s no evidence for it – and again on 14th in mtngs – when evidence from ALL others & paper trail is that he was still pushing Plan A herd immunity 13-15th – and his Perm Sec was still pushing Plan A on 18/3 to Cabinet Secretary (email uncovered by media) – the reason I physically stopped him coming to the second mtng on 14/3 was cos he was arguing AGAINST a change of plan & bullshitting everybody about herd immunity & ‘best prepared in the world’ (see evidence from multiple witnesses)

Keith shows an exchange of messages between Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, and Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical adviser, in July 2020. In it, Vallance says he does not know why Boris Johnson and Hancock were claiming they were not told about asymptomatic transmission.

Hancock says he and Johnson were not complaining about not being told about the possibility of asymptomatic transmission. They were complaining about the scientists not treating it as the norm. He says the messages in this exchange show the scientists were not certain.

Keith says he wants to talk about asymptomatic transmission.

He says Hancock says in his witness statement that his biggest regret was not pushing for asymptomatic transmission as being the baseline assumption.

He asks Hancock to confirm that he is saying he wishes he had been told about asymptomatic transmission earlier, when it really mattered.

Hancock confirms that.

Keith shows a document from 27 January 2020 says the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, said at the time that he could not be sure asymptomatic transmission was not happening.

He shows another minute from the following day quoting Whitty as saying there was credible evidence of asymptomatic transmission in Germany.

He shows minutes from a Sage (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) meeting in early February discussing asymptomatic transmission as a factor.

And he shows another minute from a Sage meeting later in February. NF is Neil Ferguson and JE is John Edmunds; they are both epidemiologists.

Hancock accepts this evidence. He says his “single biggest regret” is that he did not push harder on this issue.

He says the scientists worked on the assumption that the transmission mechanism was the same as it was for Sars. He says he now thinks he should have over-ruled the scientists, and said policy should be based on the assumption that Covid was transmitted asymptomatically.

The Covid hearing has resumed.

Matt Hancock asks if he can add something to an earlier answer.

He says there is an email from Hancock to the PM sent on 13 March proposing a suppression strategy. He says that is hard evidence showing he was pushing for a lockdown.

He says that came to light after his book.

Hugo Keith KC says the inquiry is aware of that email. He asks Hancock if he uses the word “immediate” or “lockdown” in that email.

Hancock says he does not have the email in front of him.

During the evidence to the Covid inquiry earlier Hugo Keith KC presented a WhatsApp message from Matt Hancock on 23 January 2020 in which he said the DHSC had “full plans up to and including pandemic levels regularly prepped and refreshed”.

Rishi Sunak has claimed this morning he is “not in hock to ideological zealots” over the climate crisis.

In a pooled clip for broadcasters, ahead of the Cop28 climate summit that he is attending, Sunak defended his government’s approach to net zero. He said:

We are a world leader when it comes to climate, that’s what the stats show. We’ve reduced carbon emissions in this country faster than any other major economy.

Our targets for the next few years are also more ambitious than any other major economy and because of that, I thought the right thing to do was to ensure that we get to net zero in a pragmatic and proportionate way that saves working families thousands of pounds.

I’m not in hock to ideological zealots on this topic. Of course we’re going to get to net zero, of course it’s important, but we can do that in a sensible way that saves people money and doesn’t burden them with extra costs.

Helena Horton

The Country Land and Business Association (CLA), which represents about half the managed land in England and Wales, is holding a conference today, where Steve Barclay, the environment secretary, and Steve Reed, his Labour shadow, are for the first time making their pitches to rural businesses.

The new CLA president, Victoria Vyvyan, says the rural economy is being ignored by government and seemed unimpressed by Rishi Sunak’s announcement this week of a new national park. She told the landowners present:

Nobody – and this is not said lightly – who lives and works in the national landscape wants a new national park.

I think they need to radically review what constitutes an effective National Park Authority. I think they need to review how they fix its boundaries. And I think most of all, they need to consider how we can run dynamic 21st century businesses in a national park rather than condemning us to change beds and sell tea in Scotland, possibly with a penny and an occasional courtesy from the visitors. We want to be part of a dynamic economy.

The inquiry is pausing for a break until 11.20am.

Hancock claims that on Friday 13 March, the day after he sent the “better prepared” message (see 10.52am) and after he had changed his mind about the seriousness of the situation, he told Johnson the government should lock down.

Keith points out that Hancock does not mention this in his book, Pandemic Diaries. He suggests that Hancock would have wanted to mention something this significant.

There is a whole page on how you woke up for the dawn flight to Belfast … there was from the prime ministerial meeting, prime ministerial papers, a video call and according to your book you said: ‘I called the prime minister and told him we’d have to do some very rapid back-pedalling on the issue of herd immunity, then rang Patrick who promised to do his best to repair the damage.’

Telling the prime minister of this country for the first time that he had to call an immediate lockdown is surely worthy of some recollection, is it not?

Hancock claims that, when writing the book, he did not have full access to his papers. He says this fact come to light when he was researching his papers ahead of this inquiry.

Keith says Hancock says in Pandemic Diaries that the account it contains has been “meticulously pieced together” from formal papers, notes and WhatsApp messages. And he says the inquiry has seen no evidence that Hancock did tell Johnson on 13 March there should be a lockdown.

He asks Hancock if he is sure that that is what he told Johnson.

Hancock replies: “I can remember it.”

He says the evidence came to light when he was preparing for the inquiry.

Keith shows a WhatsApp message from Hancock to Dominic Cummings on 12 March 2020 in which Hancock said the UK was “better prepared than other countries”.

Keith asks Hancock why he said that. Keith says:

By 12 March, you were surely aware that we were not better prepared than other countries. There was – you’ve acknowledged it already – no scaled up test trace isolate system, beyond the first few cases. There was no effective means of infection control. There was no border plans or quarantine system in place. You knew there was sustained community transmission in the United Kingdom by this date, and you knew that the infection fatality rate was 1% – 1% of all infected people would die. Why did you say we are better prepared than other countries?

Hancock says this was a message about communications.

But he also says that the following day, on Friday 13 March, he changed his view. He says his message came at a moment that was the “end of the road” for this approach.

UPDATE: PA Media reports:

Asked whether he had a responsibility to push harder to warn British citizens that a “wall of death” was coming, Hancock said: “In my public communications you will know that I had at that point been explaining that we might have to do that, yes. But I’m also a team player and the government position was ‘not yet.’”

Q: You must have known the government was failing to resond speedily and well.

Hancock says in many cases people had arguments for doing what they were doing.

There was also this “toxic culture”, he says. But that was more of a problem later.

He says people asked if he really wanted to tell people, early on, that it might be necessary to shut down whole cities. He did think that, he says.

Helen MacNamara, the deputy cabinet secretary, said you showed “nuclear” levels of confidence, Keith says. Is that fair?

Hancock says he reacted in different ways with different people.

In trusted environments, he was self-critical, he says.

But he says he also had to drive the system forward.

And he says no one complained about him being over-confident at the time. He goes on:

I was going in and saying we absolutely must do this. And there was a huge amounts of uncertainty and a huge amount of worry. And I basically felt it was my professional duty to try to keep going through, to keep driving forward.

UPDATE: Hancock said:

There was a huge amount of uncertainty and a huge amount of worry and I basically felt it was my professional duty to try to keep going, to try to keep driving forward.”

Of course I understand now that some people reacted in the way that they did, but it was a time of enormous uncertainty and a time when I just felt we needed to keep driving this system forward.

Keith shows an exchange of messages between Hancock and Boris Johnson in early March.

Keith suggests that, at this point Hancock should have been asking for more help from No 10.

Hancock says by this time No 10 was fully engaged. Johnson had already chaired a Cobra. And he says the exchanges show him asking for a whole national effort on Covid.