Health News at Your Fingertips

The government will publish a summary of its legal advice about the Rwanda bill, Pippa Crerar reports. She has just come out of the No 10 lobby briefing.

NEW: No 10 says govt will published summary of legal advice on Rwanda bill today “in recognition of significant public interest”.

Very unusual move, presumably intended to aid factions of Tory MPs studying bill.

PM’s spox says still govt policy not to publish legal advice in full.

The inquiry has resumed, and Hugo Keith KC is asking about the “behavioural fatigue” argument – the claim that introducing the first lockdown too soon would be mistake, because after a while people would get tired of complying.

Rishi Sunak says he does not remember a lot about this debate. He says the Department of Health was on the lead on this.

According to the Sun’s Jack Elsom, Rishi Sunak has invited Tory MPs considering rebelling over the Rwanda bill to breakfast tomorrow.

Smoked salmon offensive!

I hear Rishi Sunak has invited Tory Rwanda rebels in for a breakfast meeting tomorrow morning.

If it’s the ERG lot, presumably he would do better offering them a Full English.

The Covid inquiry has stopped for a 10-minute break.

Sunak says one of his general reflections on Covid is about data, and access to good data.

Early on, good data was not available, he says.

Keith shows Sunak another minute sent to Sunak implying Johnson kept changing his mind. In it an official refers to “a high risk that this [decision] unwinds/is unpicked”.

Sunak says he is not clear what this refers to, but he repeats the point he made earlier about it being reasonable for Johnson to mull over decisions. (See 11.33am.)

Keith puts it to Sunak that the inquiry has heard evidence from some of Johnson’s closest advisers saying he kept changing his mind and that decision-making was chaotic.

Were you aware that his closest advisers had seemingly unanimously taken the view that there was a lack of efficiency, that the administration was described privately as brutal and useless, or criminally incompetent or operationally chaotic? Was any of that known to you?

Sunak replies:

I don’t think any of those comments were shared with me at the time.

He goes on:

But he says there were intense debates about policy, as there should have been. He says:

I don’t think that that is necessarily a bad thing. It’s right that there was a vigorous debate because these were incredibly consequential decisions for tens of millions of people in all in all spheres, whether it was health, whether it’s education, whether it was economic, whether it was social, whether it was a long-term impact. These these were incredibly big decisions, the likes of which no prime minister had taken in decades.

So the fact that there was debate and that people were passionate about it, and they had different points of view, is, I think, unsurprising and good.

Keith shows Sunak minutes of a bilateral meeting he held with Boris Johnson to discuss future measures. On the second page the official writing the minute for Sunak refers to the proposals and says: “Until announced you never know!”

Keith puts it to Sunak that this is evidence that Johnson kept changing his mind.

Sunak does not accept that. He says Johnson liked to test arguments for policies. As you review the evidence, the decision might change. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that,” he says. He suggests this is “entirely normal”. It shows Johnson was “engaging with the process and hearing from different people”.

Q: So you reject the argument made in this article, that No 10 did not fully accept the need for a trade-off between different interests when deciding lockdown policy?

Sunak says that debate did not happen. With the first lockdown, it did not happen “particularly extensively”, because everything happened quickly, driven by the public health advice. But later there was more discussion.

Keith asks about this passage in the Spectator interview:

A cost-benefit calculation – a basic requirement for pretty much every public health intervention – was never made. ‘I wasn’t allowed to talk about the trade-off,’ says Sunak. Ministers were briefed by No. 10 on how to handle questions about the side-effects of lockdown. ‘The script was not to ever acknowledge them. The script was: oh, there’s no trade-off, because doing this for our health is good for the economy.’

And he shows Sunak an extract from a Treasury document shown to senior ministers in April 2020 that expressly referred to a trade-off.

Sunak says he is not sure that was a Treasury document. He says the author had worked for him, but went to work at a different department.

He says, when he spoke about trade-offs in the interview, he was referring to the government’s communications strategy.

He says the communications strategy was not necessarily wrong; there was a case for keeping it simple.

But he says he was making the case for having a wider debate.

Back at the Covid inquiry, Hugo Keith KC asks about a line in a Spectator interview with Rishi Sunak by Fraser Nelson in which Nelson said Sunak tried not to leave a paper trail of what he told Boris Johnson.

Sunak says that was what Nelson said, not what he said himself. And he says that he did write to Johnson about Covid matters.

Q: What should the inquiry make of the suggestion, that you seemed to back, that you had a form of communication with the PM that was not recorded.

Sunak says it is not possible for all conversations between cabinet ministers to be recorded. Civil servants do not follow ministers through the division lobbies, when they might talk. And he says when he was in the garden at Downing Street having lunch with his family, and Johnson was there too, they might have spoken – but a civil servant would not have been there.

He says what mattered was that decisions were recorded

Turning back to Rwanda for a moment, Sam Coates from Sky News has more on what rightwingers are up to this morning. He has posted these on X.

Emergency Rwanda legislation latest

The Tory right is plotting its tactics. It remains unhappy with the bill and wants significant changes.

But

Some are now going to vote FOR second reading because they believe it gives them more leverage at committee stage.

Play loyal for now, bide time, remain in spotlight

So one calculation puts 20 abstentions on the right

Then have the big fight in the new year.

It is interesting that Cleverly and Pursglove did lots of calls yesterday and Pursglove implied he is open to looking at amendments, according to a source, which some see as a different message to No10

However others on the right fear that if you don’t show your strength – via abstentions – the moment the vote is done tomorrow No10 will say “we’ve won; no change necessary” So the right doesn’t get what it wants

There will be a brief media statement outside Grimond Room around 12.45pm. In time for for 1pm news slot

Q: Did you think cabinet was being sidelined, as some witnesses have said.

Sunak says this is not his “strong recollection”.

He says he was always able to give the PM advice.

And he says the Covid-O and Covid-S system Boris Johnson set up – two cabinet committees, one dealing with operations, and another with strategy – made sense for Covid decision-making.

He suggests the lack of a Covid taskforce at the start was a problem. But that was introduced.

And he says this is a model that can be deployed again “off the shelf”.

Q: And did you have a view as to how the Cabinet Office was performing was at the start?

Sunak says those first few weeks were very difficult. He says people were doing the best they could. But, once the taskforce was in place, things worked better, he says.

He says there are claims that decisions were not made in the right place. But his “strong recollection” is that they were. The Covid-O and Covid-S system worked well, he says.

Keith shows Sunak pages from minutes of a meeting he held with Boris Johnson on 15 March 2020 – the day before the “stay at home” order was issued.

Here is the first page

Other pages covered the potential costs of interventions.

Sunak says, as time went on, the quality of the analysis improved considerably.

Q: When there was a key decision to be made, the Treasury kept making arguments to the PM until the last moment.

Sunak says he is not sure that is fair. The PM set up a decision-making process that worked for him, he says.

He says he does not feel he did not get the chance to make arguments to the PM. He says the PM saw him more than he saw his wife during this period, he says.