Health News at Your Fingertips

O’Connor shows Stevens an extract from Boris Johnson’s witness statement in which Johnson seems to imply that he was forced into a lockdown because the NHS had not dealt with its capacity problem, and bedblocking (patients taking up space because adult social care provision outside hospital was not available).

Stevens says Johnson was right to say there were longstanding problems with social care, that led to patients being stuck in hospital when they could be at home.

But even if there were 30,000 people in beds because of this – one of the highest estimates – then that would not enable you to deal with an extra 200,000 patients that Covid could generate, or even 800,000, according to some estimates.

And Stevens says, even though this problem was resolved after the first lockdown, further lockdowns were necessary. So it was not the main problem, he says.

O’Connor is now asking about discussions about what might need to happen if the NHS was overwhelmed, and care had to be rationed.

Stevens says Matt Hancock thought that, if decisions had to be taken about who would live and who would die, that should be a ministerial matter.

He says Hancock “took the position that in this situation he, rather than the medical profession or the public, should ultimately decide who should live and who should die”.

Stevens says that his view was that this should be a matter for doctors.

He says luckily the NHS never got to a position where anyone did have to take these decisions.

O’Connor says the inquiry has heard claims that Matt Hancock was dishonest. (See 10.01am.)

Q: Did you find Hancock truthful?

Stevens replies:

All I would say is strong accusations need strong evidence to back them up. And I don’t think I’ve seen that evidence.

O’Connor says he does not think Stevens is “engaging” with the question. He tries again.

Q: Was Hancock someone who you found you personally could trust?

Stevens replies: “Yes. For the most part, yes.”

Asked what he meant by that, Stevens goes on:

I’m not denying that there were a small, handful of occasions during the course of the year, year and a half, when there were tensions. But that I don’t think is particularly surprising given the circumstances under which everybody was working.

UPDATE: Ben Quinn has posted on X the extract on this from Stevens’ statement.

O’Connor asks Stevens if people tried to force him out of his job during Covid.

Stevens says that is not what people were saying to him at the time.

O’Connor then brings up some text exchanges between Matt Hancock, the health secretary, and Dominic Cummings, the PM’s chief adviser, in which they discussed getting rid of Stevens in January 2020.

Stevens says Hancock and Cummings have both said, once Covid struck, they wanted him to stay.

O’Connor refers to paragraph 71 from Helen MacNamara’s witness statement. In it MacNamara, deputy cabinet secretary, said people in No 10 were “somewhat idealist and probably also simplistic” about the NHS. She says no one there had a detailed understanding of the NHS.

Stevens says there is truth in this.

O’Connor presents another document that quotes Stevens saying there was a need for financial support for people who had to isolate.

Stevens says he was passing on concerns he had picked up.

Q: You thought there should be more help for people self-isolating?

That was my personal view, says Stevens.

O’Connor says the inquiry has heard evidence of difficulties in the decision-making process, and claims the PM oscillated between those decisions. What was your view?

Stevens says he was not involved in decisions like those over lockdown.

Q: But you had frequent meetings with the PM.

Stevens says he would be there for a meeting about the NHS. But then, in further meetings, decisions were taken, taking account of what they had learnt about the NHS.

He says, because of that, he cannot give good commentary on the decision-making process.

Q: Is there really nothing you can say?

Stevens says he has seen the evidence available now, some of which was not available at the time.

He says he saw the decision-making process in relation to the roll out of the vaccine programme. For the most part, there was constructive engagement on what needed to be done.

O’Connor says that will be covered in the vaccines module (ie – at a later stage of the inquiry).

Q: What role did you play in core political decision making?

Stevens says his priority was to ensure that the NHS could look after Covid patients, and other patients it needed to see too.

He says NHS England was not directly involved in debates such as whether there was a need for lockdowns.

He says he attended some of the Cobra emergency committee meetings dealing with Covid. But he says that over time the government stopped using Cobra to deal with Covid matters.

Q: You says in your statement these meetings were not “optimally effective”. What do you mean?

Stevens says the meetings were very large, which did not help. And sometimes ministers there did not have full authority.

Q: You say when Matt Hancock was chairing them, sometimes other departments sent junior ministers.

Stevens says is not saying that was cause and effect.

Q: That is what you imply.

Stevens says he is just saying what he observed.

Q: Would more senior ministers have attended if the PM had been chairing those meetings?

Stevens says, if Boris Johnson had been chairing the meeting, other secretaries of state might have attended. But he says he is not sure that would have made a big difference to the substance of what was decided.

At the Covid inquiry Simon Stevens is giving evidence now.

Andrew O’Connor KC, counsel for the inquiry, is questioning him.

They begin with an explanation of NHS England, and how it is not under the direct control of the Department of Health and Social Care. O’Connor says Matt Hancock was not officially Stevens’ boss. Stevens says it often felt that he had many bosses.

Labour councillors say they’re visiting Westminster today hoping to force meeting with Starmer’s office

Sammy Gecsoyler

A delegation of current and recently resigned Labour councillors, including the former and acting Oxford CLP chair, are to visit Westminster this afternoon to force a meeting with Keir Starmer’s office.

The delegation will be welcomed by John McDonnell. Caroline Raine, the acting chair of the Oxford and District Labour party, is heading the delegation. Raine became chair after the former post holder, Jabu Nala-Hartley, quit the party, citing Starmer’s “refusal to condemn collective punishment of Palestinians”.

Nala-Hartley was one of the nine Oxford councillors who resigned from the party last month which led to Labour losing control of the council. Nala-Hartley is among the delegation in Westminster today, which is made up of a group of about 10 councillors and party activists.

Raine wrote to Starmer’s office yesterday. She said:

I would like to again emphasise that we have made arrangements to come to Westminster tomorrow afternoon. We expect to be seen by someone from LOTO [the leader of the opposition’s office] between 2.30 and 4pm please. We gave notice in good time and it would be very poor practice in a crisis like this for us to be sent away without being heard.

She said that the delegation includes Jews, Muslims, Christians and those of no religious faith and added “the purpose of our delegation is to stress to the leadership that we uphold a universal aspiration for human rights, due process, freedom of speech and thought, dignity and equality.”

In a statement, the delegation say they “want to put the case for an immediate ceasefire” to Starmer. They say:

We want an Israel where Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace and liberty. By agreeing that the war against Hamas can continue after a humanitarian pause, the Labour party is colluding in the endorsement of war crimes and of breaches of international law.

Simon Stevens, the former NHS England chief executive, is about to give evidence to the Covid inquiry.

The hearings on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week have all been embarrassing for Boris Johnson, but they have also been bad for the reputation of Matt Hancock, health secretary during Covid. Dominic Cummings and Helen MacNamara did not agree on much, but they both accused Hancock of misleading colleagues about what the Department of Health was actually doing about the threat posed by the virus (see here and here).

Stevens, and Sir Chris Wormald, permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, who is up later this morning, are both likely to be asked about these claims.

Rishi Sunak told reporters at the AI safety summit this morning that people should not be “alarmist” about AI – even though he also said the technology could be as dangerous as a pandemic, or nuclear war.

Asked whether a Terminator-style rise of the machines was possible, he replied:

People developing this technology themselves have raised the risk that AI may pose and it’s important to not be alarmist about this. There’s debate about this topic. People in the industry themselves don’t agree and we can’t be certain.

But there is a case to believe that it may pose a risk on a scale like pandemics and nuclear war, and that’s why, as leaders, we have a responsibility to act to take the steps to protect people, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.

Last week the government published three papers assessing the risks posed by AI.

Good morning. This afternoon Rishi Sunak will be wrapping up the AI safety summit at Bletchley Park with a press conference. The summit has already produced the Bletchley declaration. But, with the government saying it will not “rush to regulate”, the event is not producing domestic UK law. Labour has spotted an opportunity and this morning it is saying that it would “urgently” impose new regulations on companies involved in so-called frontier AI (the most advanced type).

Peter Kyle, the shadow science secretary, said:

AI has the potential to transform the world and deliver life-changing benefits for working people. From delivering earlier cancer diagnosis, to relieving traffic congestion, AI can be a force for good.

But to secure these benefits we must get on top of the risks and build public trust. It is not good enough for our ‘inaction man’ prime minister to say he will not rush to take action, having told the public that there are national security risks which could end our way of life. The AI summit was an opportunity for the UK to lead the global debate on how we regulate this powerful new technology for good. Instead the prime minister has been left behind by US and EU who are moving ahead with real safeguards on the technology.

In a statement announcing its plan, Labour says:

A Labour government would urgently introduce binding regulation of those companies developing the most powerful ‘frontier’ AI . This would include requirements to:

• Report before they train models over a certain capability threshold.

• Conduct safety testing and evaluation on these models, with independent oversight

• Maintain strong information security protections, to limit the unintended spread of dangerous models

We will hear more on that this afternoon. First, this morning, the two most powerful officials in the NHS when coronavirus struck will give evidence to the Covid inquiry.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Simon Stevens, the former NHS England chief executive, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry. Later in the morning Sir Chris Wormald, permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, gives evidence.

10am: Sir Mark Rowley, Metropolitan police commissioner, and Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, are questioned by the London assembly.

Noon: Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions from MSPs.

2pm: Prof Yvonne Doyle, former medical director for Public Health England, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry.

Around 4pm: Rishi Sunak is due to chair a press conference at the end of the AI safety summit at Bletchley Park.

If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line; privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate); or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.