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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Matt Hancock says he is ‘profoundly sorry’ for ‘huge error’ in UK’s pandemic planning – as it happened

Home Office Rwanda United Kingdom the Home Office Immigration
Former health secretary Matt Hancock leaves after giving evidence at the UK Covid inquiry.
Former health secretary Matt Hancock leaves after giving evidence at the UK Covid inquiry. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Afternoon summary

Matt Hancock leaving the Covid inquiry.
Matt Hancock leaving the Covid inquiry. Photograph: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Shutterstock

Updated

Reeves leads Hunt by 12 points on who would make best chancellor, poll suggests

Ipsos has published some fresh polling today. It is available in full here, and Keiran Pedley from the firm has a good Twitter thread summing up the main findings which starts here.

There is plenty of interesting material in the survey but, in the light of the importance of the economy in deciding the outcome of elections, two findings stand out.

First, Labour has a big lead over the Conservatives on which party would get best value from public spending.

And, second, Rachel Reeves has a 12-point lead over Jeremy Hunt on who would make the best chancellor. This is not the first time the shadow chancellor has led on this measure since 2010, but no shadow chancellor has been this far ahead in the last 13 years. Ed Balls came closest, leading George Osborne by eight points in the summer of 2012, after Osborne’s “omnishambles” budget.

In the Commons two MPs, Caroline Nokes (Con) and Chris Bryant (Lab), have just used point of orders to condemn Andrew Bridgen for retweeting a tweet from Laurence Fox, the leader of the Reclaim party, about the vote on his 10-minute rule bill. (See 4.05pm.) In the extended tweet, Fox named the Tories who voted against the Bridgen bill and claimed they had voted in favour of “the grooming and mutilation of children”. Nokes said Bridgen should face a sanction for this, and Bryant, who chairs the Commons standards committee, said the Fox tweet amounted to incitement to violence. It was probably libellous too, he said.

Nigel Evans, the deputy speaker who was in charge, said he was not responsible for what MPs tweeted. But MPs should always remember the importance of moderation, he said.

He also said he thought this would not be the last word on this matter.

Updated

Senior NHS doctors in England vote to strike over pay

Senior doctors in England have voted to strike in overwhelming numbers for the first time in the row over pay, Rachel Hall reports.

Hunt signs memorandum of understanding with EU to facilitate dialogue on financial services regulation

Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, has signed an agreement with the EU that will see London and Brussels working closer together on financial services and coordinating before big international meetings, PA Media reports. PA says:

Hunt said that the memorandum of understanding would help to support the UK and London’s role as a hub of financial services around the world.

The sector makes up more than a tenth of the British economy, being worth more than a quarter of a trillion pounds last year.

However, EU officials said the deal only sets up a space where the two sides can speak to each other.

“It will set up a forum to facilitate dialogue,” Daniel Ferrie, a spokesperson for the European Commission, said in a tweet. “It does not restore UK access to EU, nor prejudges adoption of equivalence decisions.”

Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, and Mairead McGuinness, the EU commissioner for financial services, in Brussels today after signing a memorandum of understanding on financial services
Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, and Mairead McGuinness, the EU commissioner for financial services, in Brussels today after signing a memorandum of understanding on financial services. Photograph: Thierry Monasse/Getty Images

Updated

MPs vote down Andrew Bridgen's 10-minute rule bill banning social transitioning in schools by 40 to 34

MPs have voted down a motion proposing to ban social transition practices in schools.

The division came after Andrew Bridgen, who was expelled from the Conservative party and who now represents the Reclaim party, gave a speech under the 10-minute rule procedure asking for permission to introduce a schools (gender and parental rights) bill.

Normally, after an MP introduces a 10-minute rule bill, the Commons grants permission without a vote for the legislation to be formally introduced, knowing that that is the end of the process because time is never available for it to go any further.

But this afternoon MPs forced a vote, and the Bridgen motion was defeated by 40 votes to 34.

The Bridgen bill would “prohibit the promotion of social transition practices in school; require schools to inform parents if their child has indicated an intention to pursue, or has commenced, social transition; [and] provide for a right for parents to access information about lessons in schools”.

Bridgen told MPs:

Under all our noses, members of society, either politically or educationally tasked with helping bring up our children have turned raising the next generation into a science experiment with consequences that break my heart. Social transition practices in school have now become the norm in every classroom in the country.

But Labour’s Ben Bradshaw said the proposal was “despicable”. He explained:

Trans and non-binary people have always existed. Gender dysphoria has been in internationally-recognised condition for decades …

Schools have become very experienced at handling social transitioning with both sensitivity and professionalism.

The impact of this bill would turn the clock back to an age in which the very existence of trans and non-binary people, a tiny minority, was simply not acknowledged.

Bridgen was supported by 25 Tories, six DUP MPs and one independent.

But 10 Tories were among the 40 MPs who voted the bill down.

Updated

Matt Hancock was confronted by bereaved family members, including one dressed as the Grim Reaper, as he left the Covid inquiry, PA Media reports. PA says:

Charles Persinger, 58, lost his wife and his mother to coronavirus, one month apart.

His mother, Susan Persinger, died in January 2021 aged 74, while his wife. Katie Persinger, a care home manager, died in February 2021 aged 51.

As Hancock got into his car, Persinger, dressed as the Grim Reaper, shouted sarcastically after him: “I’m a big fan of your work.”

Charles Persinger, 58, dressed up as the Grim Reaper outside Dorland House, where the Covid inquiry hearings are taking place.
Charles Persinger, 58, dressed up as the Grim Reaper outside Dorland House, where the Covid inquiry hearings are taking place. Photograph: Cameron Henderson/PA

Tory party says it will not investigate groping claims against Daniel Korski

Daniel Korski, one of the three Conservatives still in the contest to the party’s candidate for London mayor, has issued a statement describing as “baseless” the claim that he groped a TV producer when he was working in Downing Street 10 years ago.

As Ben Quinn and Aubrey Allegretti report, the Conservative party has said it will not investigate the claim.

Labour says Hancock's evidence on social care shows sector was 'totally neglected' by Tories

Liz Kendall, the shadow social care minister, says Matt Hancock’s evidence to the Covid inquiry showed the Tories had “totally neglected” social care for 13 years.

Matt Hancock admitted that the Conservatives have totally neglected social care for 13 years. If you don’t know how many care homes there are in the country you’re supposed to be governing, you can’t ensure people receive the care they need.

His apology will provide little comfort to the 43,000 families who lost loved ones to Covid in care homes.

Labour would ensure that adult social care is stabilised for the future, with record vacancies tackled through a new deal for care workers and a long-term plan of investment and reform, so that lessons are learned and society’s most vulnerable are never left so exposed again.

In his evidence to the inquiry this morning Hancock said that before the pandemic the Department of Health and Social Care was lacking basic data about the sector. He went on: “For instance, how many care homes are operating right now in the UK – that was a fact that we did not know at that time and I’m glad to say now there’s far better data.”

Hancock said that one problem was that, while he was in charge of social care policy as health and social care secretary, delivering social care was a matter for local authorities.

At another point Hugo Keith KC, counsel for the inquiry, asked Hancock if he could say the adult social care sector was well prepared for a pandemic “when the department had no means of finding out whether or not they had the right plans in place, whether local authorities had planned sufficiently, let alone how many numbers were in the care sector.”

Hancock replied: “No, it was terrible.”

Updated

James Bethell is a close friend of Matt Hancock’s and served as a junior health minister in his department during Covid. He agrees with the main argument his former boss was making. (See 10.42am and 11.34am.)

Updated

Matt Hancock leaving the Covid inquiry earlier.
Matt Hancock leaving the Covid inquiry earlier. Photograph: Mark Thomas/Shutterstock

Starmer says Sunak's 'extraordinary' language, like 'I'm on it', shows how 'out of touch' he is on cost of living

Keir Starmer has also claimed that some of the language used by Rishi Sunak about the cost of living crisis has been “extraordinary”.

Speaking at the New Statesman’s Politics Live conference this morning, Starmer said:

Some of the language he has used in the last week has been extraordinary: ‘I’m on it’, ‘Hold your nerve’, or recently telling the country to ‘understand the economic context’.

The idea that people who are struggling every day do not understand the economic context they are in is, frankly, real evidence of how out of touch he is.

Sunak urged people to hold their nerve in a tweet on Monday, and later the same day he said, with regard to the battle against inflation, he was “totally, 100% on it”. Talking about inflation, he has also repeatedly argued that this is a global problem, as he did at PMQs last week, and again in his interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg at the weekend.

At the New Statesman event, Starmer said he was not criticising Sunak for being wealthy. But he said his own working-class upbringing meant he had a better understanding than the PM did of what it means to struggle with the cost of living. He said:

We holidayed here. We never went abroad. We didn’t really eat out very much. It’s not a sob story, it’s a story of what it’s like to grow up working class, but more importantly, it gave me an insight into respect and dignity.

There were times where we couldn’t pay all the bills and we had to decide what we wouldn’t have any more… That is a feeling of anxiety but also shame, of not being able to do something. I don’t think [Sunak’s] been in that position.

Zoë Grünewald at the New Statesman has a full write-up of what Starmer said here.

Updated

Starmer refuses to commit to always accepting recommendations from public sector pay bodies

Keir Starmer has refused to commit a future Labour government to always accepting recommendations from public sector pay bodies, PA Media reports.

Speaking at the New Statesman’s Politics Live conference this morning, Starmer said Labour would have to “go at pace” to “repair and rebuild” the country’s finances but stressed that the “strong fiscal rules of the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, could not be broken when paying for public sector improvements, PA reports.

Asked about his stance on public sector pay recommendations, Starmer said:

The first thing about public sector pay is we need to understand why people want their wages to go up because, for most people, their wages haven’t gone up in material terms for 13 years. And if your wages haven’t gone up in material terms but every bill has gone up, there is a real squeeze on. The failure to grow the economy, and the additional damage that Liz Truss did, is the cause of that.

But I’m not going to hide from this. If we are privileged enough to come into power at the next election … we’re going to inherit a real mess – a very badly damaged economy, public services that aren’t on their knees but are on their face, the NHS in particular.

And a sense that we’ve got to go at pace to try and repair and rebuild, and run towards the future which is available for us as a country.

And Rachel’s been clear that that will require us to have strong fiscal rules which we’re not going to break. But we urgently need to get on with the task now of picking the country up, rebuilding and moving forwards.

Keir Starmer at the New Statesman Politics Live conference this morning.
Keir Starmer at the New Statesman Politics Live conference this morning. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Updated

An anti-vaccine protester being detained by the police outside the Covid inquiry earlier today.
An anti-vaccine protester being detained by the police outside the Covid inquiry earlier today. Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

At cabinet this morning the main discussion was about the NHS, and the long-term workforce plan being published later this week. In a readout of what was said, No 10 told journalists:

As part of the government’s commitment to cut waiting lists and ensure the health service thrives for another 75 years, the prime minister said we would publish the first ever NHS Long Term Workforce Plan ahead of next week’s anniversary.

He said the plan was not just simply about training more doctors and nurses, it would also set out how the NHS will retain more clinicians and reform how it works to match the areas of highest demand and learn from approaches in other countries.

He said this plan was written by the NHS, it was what staff have called for and it was an example of the government doing the right thing for the long term – not just the here and now.

Here is some Twitter comment on Matt Hancock’s evidence to the Covid inquiry.

From Prof Devi Sridhar, professor of global public health at Edinburgh University

From my colleague Peter Walker

From Tom Harwood from GB News

From my colleague John Crace

From the journalist Isabel Oakeshott, an outspoken critic of lockdown policies

Nurses fail to vote in sufficient numbers for fresh strikes in England

Nurses in England have failed to vote in sufficient numbers for further strike action, Rachel Hall reports.

Wetherby has finished. Hugo Keith KC gets up.

He says the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group have sent an email on the basis of something Hancock said earlier. Hancock said Covid-19 was the first coronavirus that could be transmitted asymptomatically. Keith says the group have said that that was wrong, and that Mers (Middle East respiratory syndrome) and Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) could also be transmitted asymptomatically.

Hancock does not contest this. But he says that the advice about coronavirus and asymptomatic transmission was vital to decisions taken early in the pandemic.

And that’s it. His evidence is over.

Updated

Pete Wetherby KC, counsel for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, is now asking questions. He asks about various legal measures in place before the pandemic started.

Hancock says he agrees with the general point, which is that the government should have been prepared for lockdown.

This is from ITV’s Robert Peston, seems a reliable bet, based on the evidence already given to the inquiry.

Hancock accepts pandemic planning was not fit for purpose

Keith is on his final question.

Q: Why did no pandemic planning paper pay any attention to the impact of a pandemic on the vulnerable, on ethnic minority groups, or on other groups affected by health inequalities? No thought was given to the impact of measures on these groups.

Hancock says, when he appointed Chris Whitty as chief medical officer, it was understanding that health inequalities would be at the top of his agenda.

He says the medical impacts were covered by the plan.

As for the social impacts, he says the assumption that you are not going to stop a pandemic implies the most vulnerable will be hit hardest.

There are costs of lockdown. If the impact of a virus is going to be worse, you have to hit it hard, “and very, very early”.

Q: No consideration was given to the needs of the most vulnerable.

Hancock says consideration was given on a clinical basis, but not on a socioeconomic basis.

Q: “Lions led by structural donkeys. Personally everyone gave their all, but the system was not fit for purpose.”

Hancock says that is “absolutely right”. But he says that was a problem across the world, and it went back a long way.

Updated

Hancock says no government would deploy its entire army on a single day.

But, with health, the entire resources of the NHS are used every day.

This means it does not have resilience in a crisis, he says.

He says other countries, which spent more on health and have more capacity, are better prepared.

But this would require a “huge increase in the already very, very large NHS budget”, he says.

Hancock says the government started buying PPE in January 2020. But the problems with the stockpile were “very significant”, he says. He says this will be covered in more detail in the next module.

He says there should be a legal requirement on health providers to hold a certain amount of PPE.

Setting up supply chains in short order is very hard, he says.

Keith mentions the need for mass diagnositic testing.

“Yes, terrible,” says Hancock, in what seems to be a reference to the UK’s testing capacity.

Keith mentions the need for mass contact tracing.

Hancock accepts that there was “no such thing” in place.

Updated

Hancock says, in the 18 months before the pandemic started, he was never asked to appear at that national security council to talk about pandemic planning.

Hancock says it is 'completely indefensible' that UK Health Security Agency gets less than 1% of money spent on defence

Q: Do you agree ministers need training in how to deal with civil contingencies?

Yes, says Hancock. He says he was in the process of setting up a scheme for training like that, with the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford, when Covid struck. But Covid meant that had to stop.

Q: Do you think there should be a minister in sole charge of resilience, as Oliver Letwin recommended?

Yes, says Hancock. He says they would not necessarily have to be in cabinet. But they would need to have the ear of the PM.

He says the UK now has the UK Health Security Agency. He says the person in charge (currently Dame Jenny Harries) should wake up every morning worrying about the next pandemic.

We now, once again, have a body whose sole responsibility is preparing Britain to be resilient to health external health threats.

I want Jenny Harries and whoever’s in her job to wake up every morning worrying about the next pandemic and what needs to be put in place.

You can of course supplement that with better resilience training at the centre as well. But you mustn’t take away from the real burning accountability of the person in that job.

He says the UK spends £53bn on defence. But the budget for UKHSA is just £450m, even though more than 220,000 people died from Covid.

That is less than 1% of the defence budget, he says. He says spending so little on the body in charge of pandemic planning is “completely indefensible”.

Updated

Q: Was the planning for care homes complete to allow the surge capacity in hospitals to be completed?

Hancock says the work was being done. But, as for whether it was complete, he says he will need to look at the paperwork.

Hancock says advice saying there was no need to quarantine people arriving from Wuhan was 'madness'

Hancock says he had to overrule advice telling him not to quarantine people arriving in the UK from Wuhan in China as the pandemic started. That was “madness”, he says.

Hancock says failure to consider how consequences of pandemic could have been avoided was 'absolute tragedy'

Hancock is repeating his point about the doctrinal failure. That failure was “colossal”, he says, and much more significant than the other flaws.

Q: There was a systemic failure to think about how to prevent catastrophic consequences arising, as opposed to how to manage catastrophic consequences.

Hancock replies:

I could not agree more. And it is an absolute tragedy.

Keith says he wants to draw some threads together.

Q: Do you accept there was a bias in the department in favour of influenza, downplaying the risk of another disease?

Hancock says it would have been better if the plans had been for a general respiratory disease.

Q: Do you accept that the real risk of a coronavirus was not thought about because of this virus?

Hancock says Covid-19 is the first known coronavirus that can be transmitted asymptomatically.

A flu plan assumes asymptomatic transmission. So in some ways a flu plan would have been more suitable than a coronavirus plan, which would have assumed no asymptomatic transmission.

But planning for flu had some benefits, he says.

And, although this was the error, it was not the biggest problem.

The flawed doctrine error (see 10.42am) was “significantly bigger” than the flu bias error.

Hancock says adult social care “desperately needs reform”.

But, again, he contests the claim that better planning for social care would have made a big difference in the pandemic.

Keith is now showing Hancock a document showing how much work planned by the Pandemic Flu Readiness Board stopped at the end of 2018. He asks if Hancock was aware of this.

Hancock says he was responsible, because he was responsible for everything that happened in the department as secretary of state.

But he returns to his claim that, because the planning was flawed (see 10.42am and 11.34am), more planning might not have made much difference.

Updated

Hancock says UK came 'within hours' of running out of drugs for intensive care during Covid, but no-deal planning helped

Hancock said the UK came “within hours” of running out of medicines for intensive care during Covid.

And he claimed the only reason this did not happen was because of the work done for a possible no-deal Brexit. He said:

[The government came] extremely close, within hours, of running out of medicines for intensive care during that pandemic. It wasn’t widely reported at the time … and I think the only reason that we didn’t run out is because of the work that Steve Oldfield [chief commercial officer at the Department of Health and Social Care] and his team did, which they did during 2019, in preparation for a no-deal Brexit.

Hancock said during Covid the government “knew more about the pharmaceutical supply chain in the UK than at any time in history”. This information was vital, and it meant “the difference between running out and not running out of drugs in intensive care in the pandemic”.

He went on:

So when it comes to the question of the overall impact of Brexit, absolutely the paperwork is very clear that some of the preparation work was stopped, and a small number of people would move off that work.

On the other hand, we were better prepared in terms of supply chains.

Updated

Hancock rejects claim that pause in pandemic planning caused by no-deal Brexit preparations had significant impact on Covid

Keith is now showing Hancock a letter sent to Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, in March 2019 saying that responsibility for pandemic planning had transferred to his office because of the no-deal work being done within the Department of Health and Social Care.

He says the letter shows that some pandemic planning was paused. That was a decision of great significance, wasn’t it?

Hancock says it was a decision. But he does not accept it was “of great significance”.

The number of individuals involved in this work was limited, he says.

And he says, for the reasons he has explained earlier (see 10.42am and 11.34am), he is not convinced that extra pandemic planning, under the doctrine then in place, would have made that much difference.

Updated

Back in the hearing Hugo Keith KC asks when Matt Hancock was briefied on the need for no-deal Brexit planning.

Hancock says that discussion was ongoing. In the summer of 2019, resources were allocated to no-deal planning.

But he says his team considered all threats.

Isabel Oakeshott says that, in the year when she was working with Matt Hancock on his Pandemic Diaries, she never heard him make the argument that he is making today about the biggest flaw in government planning being its failure to prepare for lockdown measures that might have stopped the pandemic taking off. (See 10.42am and 11.34am.)

But the Hancock argument does echo an argument raised by the counsel to the inquiry, Hugo Keith KC two weeks ago, in what may or may not have been a clue to the thinking of its chair, Heather Hallett.

Hancock says UK should have been ready for 'wider, earlier' lockdown

Going back to the Covid inquiry, Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, told it that, even if the UK had been hit by a flu pandemic (which it had prepared for thoroughly), there would have been problems because the planning was flawed. He said:

My central point that to say that the main problem with that plan was that it was a flu plan and there was and we ended up with a coronavirus pandemic is, of course, a flaw, but it is not the central flaw.

If we’d had a flu pandemic, we would have had a massive problem because of the doctrinal failure of how to respond to it as well – that was a much bigger error, it was an error across the western world, but it was a much bigger error and it is absolutely central.

He argued that the key doctrinal flaw was the assumption that planning should focus on dealing with the outcome of a pandemic, not with preventing it. (See 10.42am.) He said the UK should be ready to implement policies like lockdown more quickly.

It is central to what we must learn as a country that we’ve got to be ready to hit a pandemic hard: that we’ve got to be able to take action – lockdown action if necessary, that is wider, earlier, more stringent than feels comfortable at the time.

And the failure to plan for that was a much bigger flaw in the strategy than the fact that it was targeted at the wrong disease …

The doctrinal flaw was the biggest by a long way because if we’d had a flu pandemic, we still would have had the problem of no plan in place for lockdown, no prep for how to do one, no work on what, how best to lock down with the least damage.

I understand deeply the consequences of lockdown and the negative consequences for many, many people – many of which persist to this day.

Updated

Whitehall watchdog says Boris Johnson has exposed how 'out of date' are rules for ex-ministers taking second jobs

A standards watchdog has said that Boris Johnson’s failure to comply with outside job rules before starting as a Daily Mail columnist shows how “out of date” the regulatory system in this area now is.

Lord Pickles, the Tory peer who chairs the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), made the point in a letter to Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, published today.

Acoba advises on what second jobs it is appropriate for former ministers and former senior officials to accept soon after leaving government. The system is designed to avoid conflicts of interest. But its advice is not binding.

In his letter to Dowden, who is in charge of the Cabinet Office, Pickles also suggested that corruption risks are not being monitored because the system is outdated. Pickles said:

Mr Johnson’s role as a columnist for the Daily Mail was trailed by the media outlet in a front page pre-announcement of a new columnist on the morning of Friday 16 June. Mr Johnson later the same day confirmed his new role in a pre-recorded video on Twitter around 1pm, 30 minutes after submitting an application to Acoba for advice. This is a clear and unambiguous breach of the government’s rules and requirements of the ministerial code. Mr Johnson is familiar with both. He set out the standards expected in the ministerial code whilst prime minister and has had made previous applications under the rules, including a similar failure to follow the rules when he left ministerial office in 2018.

The risks under the rules in media and journalistic appointments are usually regarded as limited and have been subject to a standard set of conditions preventing individuals from: drawing on privileged information; and lobbying the UK government.

Mr Johnson’s case is a further illustration of how out of date the government’s business rules are. They were designed to offer guidance when “good chaps” could be relied on to observe the letter and the spirit of the rules. If it ever existed, that time has long passed and the contemporary world has outgrown the rules. This forces Acoba to spend time on low-risk applications at the expense of more complex and challenging cases. New areas of corruption are not monitored because they were not envisaged when the rules were drawn up.

Pickles has also published his letter to Johnson saying he committed “a clear and unambiguous breach of the rules”.

Updated

Hancock says 'there isn't a day that goes by' when he doesn't think of those who died during Covid, and their loved ones

Matt Hancock has said that he thinks of those who died during Covid, and their loved ones left behind, every day.

He made the comment in his witness statement to the inquiry. The statement has not been published in full, but an excerpt from it was shown on screen at the opening of the inquiry. In it Hancock said:

There isn’t a day that goes by that I do not think about all those who lost their lives to this awful disease or the loved ones they have left behind.

My office in parliament overlooks the National Memorial Covid Wall. I have visited the wall and been able to read about many of the families affected. I express my deepest sympathies to all those affected.

Updated

Keith says the pandemic plan from 2011 did not get updated. Hancock confirms this.

He confirms that preparing for a no-deal Brexit was a factor in this.

But he defends the need for the government to do the no-deal planning.

Updated

ITV’s Robert Peston has a screenshot of the document shown to the Covid inquiry earlier about planning for various risks. Alongside a flu or other pandemic, the mitigation boxes are empty.

When asked about this, Hancock told the inquiry that, just because no plan was shown in this document, that does not mean no plan existed. Other documents shown to the inquiry confirm that plans were in place, he said.

Hancock should have 'pursued and harried' officials until they addressed gaps in pandemic planning, Covid inquiry told

Keith asks Hancock why he did not ask officials where the antivirals (drugs) where for a non-flu pandemic, and where the stockpiles were for a non-flu pandemic? He says Hancock did not need a formal submission from civil servants to ask these questions.

He says Hancock could have “pursued and harried [officials] until something was done”.

Hancock says the pandemic was unprecedented. And he says that, as secretary of state, he had to address multiple problems. He says he was told that tackling problems like obesity were the main health challenges.

Updated

Hancock says he is 'profoundly sorry' for 'huge error' in UK's pandemic planning

Hancock expands on his belief that the UK’s pandemic planning was wrong. And he says this was a problem for other countries too.

He says that is why is “emotionally committed” to the inquiry. It must get to the bottom of this “huge error in the doctrine”, he says.

He goes on to apologise.

I am profoundly sorry for the impact that it had, I’m profoundly sorry for each death that has occurred.

And I also understand why, for some, it will be hard to take that apology from me. I understand that, I get it.

But it is honest and heartfelt, and I’m not very good at talking about my emotions and how I feel. But that is honest and true.

And all I can do is ensure that this inquiry gets to the bottom of it, and that for the future, we learn the right lessons, so that we stop a pandemic in its tracks much, much earlier.

And that we have the systems in place ready to do that, because I’m worried that they’re being dismantled as we speak.

Matt Hancock giving evidence to the Covid inquiry.
Matt Hancock giving evidence to the Covid inquiry. Photograph: UK Covid-19 Inquiry/PA

Updated

Hancock says UK's pandemic planning doctrine before Covid was 'wrong'

Back at the Covid inquiry, Matt Hancock says he was told that the UK was well prepared for a pandemic.

He was told the UK had PPE stored up. It did – but it was hard to access it quickly, he says.

He was told they had the ability to do testing. They did, he said – but they were not able to scale up testing.

He was told they had drugs available. They did, but they were only suitable for flu, he says.

He says the UK had a doctrine on pandemic planning. And that doctrine was “wrong”.

The absolutely central problem with the planning in the UK was that the doctrine was wrong.

The attitude, the doctrine of the UK was to plan for the consequences of a disaster.

Can we buy enough body bags? Where are we going to bury the dead? And that was completely wrong.

Of course, it’s important to have that in case you fail to stop a pandemic, but central to pandemic planning needs to be – how do you stop the disaster from happening in the first place? How do you suppress the virus?

The doctrine was about planning for the consequences of dealing with a pandemic, for example, being able to cope with large numbers of dead bodies, he says.

He says the planning should have focused on avoiding a pandemic in the first place.

(This echoes one of the arguments made by Keith himself, in his opening statement to the inquiry two weeks ago.)

UPDATE: Hancock said:

I was told that we have plans in these areas.

So for instance, on stockpiles, I was told that we had a very significant stockpile of PPE. And we did. The problem was that it was extremely hard to get it out fast enough when the crisis hit.

I was told that we were good at developing tests, and indeed we were. We developed a test in the first few days after the genetic code of Covid-19 was published. The problem was there was no plan in place to scale testing that we could execute.

On antivirals, we had a stockpile of antivirals for a flu, but not for a coronavirus.

On vaccines, I was concerned that we weren’t in a strong-enough position because we were reliant on manufacturing vaccines overseas. And I thought that in a pandemic scenario, force majeure would mean it would be hard to get hold of vaccine doses if they were physically manufactured overseas no matter what our contracts said.

And so I insisted that we pushed on domestic manufacture and sought the funding to deliver on that.

Updated

Four supermarket executives are giving evidence to the Commons business committee about claims they have been profiteering from rising prices. My colleague Graeme Wearden is covering the hearing on his business live blog.

Hancock says a flu pandemic was category 1 risk because that was deemed the most likely pandemic.

But of course the department was aware of the risk of other pandemics, he says. He says it was dealing with other diseases at the time.

Keith shows Hancock a document about the briefing Hancock received on his first day in office. It included a briefing on global and public health.

Q: There is no indication in this document about the level of risk from pandemic flu. Did you ask for more detail about that?

Yes, says Hancock. He says he recalls reading the document that night, and specifically asking for more information.

Updated

The journalist Isabel Oakeshott thinks Matt Hanock is giving a “typically assured” performance.

Oakeshott, of course, is the journalist who helped Hancock produce his Pandemic Diaries, his account of handling the Covid crisis, before she betrayed his trust by leaking his private WhatsApp messages to the Daily Telegraph. She argued the revelations were in the public interest.

Lorelei King, 69, protesting outside the Covid inquiry this morning. outside the Inquiry. Her husband, Vincent Marzello, died in March 31 2020. Matt Hancock shook his hand but he died in a care home despite Hancock’s assurance of a ‘ring of protection’ around care homes.
Lorelei King, 69, protesting outside the Covid inquiry this morning. Her husband, Vincent Marzello, died in March 31 2020. Matt Hancock shook his hand but he died in a care home despite Hancock’s assurance of a ‘ring of protection’ around care homes. Photograph: Mark Thomas/Shutterstock

Updated

Hancock says there was a potential flu outbreak during the autumn of 2019. There was also monkeypox, he says (it is now referred to as mpox), and the Ebola outbreak.

For him, preparing for pandemics was not a theoretical exercise, he says. It was part of the job.

Keith asks if the risk of a pandemic came up at the departmental board.

Hancock says he does not remember that. But he would not expect the board to discuss that. The board was there to make sure the department was properly resourced. It was not there to do the planning itself.

Hancock says, as health secretary, he covered many areas of importance. He says he would not say the NHS was the most important.

Preparing for emergencies was part of the job, he says.

Q: Were risks prioritised?

Of course, says Hancock. That is vital.

And he says, in a system like the health service, things have to be dealt with at the right level. Not everything can go to the secretary of state.

He says the risk of a flu pandemic was a tier 1 risk. He was warned about this on his first day in office. The briefing covered pandemic flu, and other pandemics.

He says on day one he asked for more information about preparedness.

That was because he knew the importance of being prepared. Before he went into politics, when he worked at the Bank of England, he had experience of dealing with an emergency.

Updated

Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel for the inquiry, is questioning Matt Hancock.

Keith starts by saying Hancock was paymaster general and minister for the Cabinet Office between 2015 and 2016. He says that, in that capacity, Hancock was in charge of the national risk register.

Hancock confirms that. But he says he was the junior minister. Oliver Letwin, his boss, was in charge, he says.

Keith starts by stressing that today he will be asking about events that happened pre-pandemic. He is focusing on emergency preparations.

So he will not be asking about matters like lockdown, or PPE. Those issues will be covered in later modules, particularly in module 2, which will run in the autumn, he says.

Updated

Matt Hancock arriving at the Covid inquiry.
Matt Hancock arriving at the Covid inquiry. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Reuters

Matt Hancock gives evidence to the Covid inquiry

Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, is about to start giving evidence to the Covid inquiry. He is the only witness scheduled for this morning, and so the hearing could run until about 1pm.

At this stage the inquiry is just looking at how prepared the UK was for a pandemic, and so the evidence will focus on events before 2020. Hancock became health secretary in 2018.

We will have a live feed at the top of the blog.

Caroline Nokes, the Tory chair of the women and equalities committee, has been giving interviews about its report this morning. (See 9.13am.) Asked about the Home Office’s economic impact assessment of its illegal migration bill, she said it showed why the plan to deport migrants to Rwanda was “very difficult to justify”.

Asked if the Rwanda policy represented value for money for the taxpayer, she told Sky News:

No, I don’t think it does. I have always been concerned that the Rwanda scheme is not only very difficult to justify – why we should be sending asylum seekers to Rwanda to be processed within the Rwandan asylum system, when actually we should have better systems here?

But the value for money question is a perfectly valid and legitimate one.

And it’s worrying when the Home Office themselves can’t be certain that these figures are accurate, and they’re more predicated on the Rwandan scheme acting more as a deterrent and, to date, we’ve not seen it act as a deterrent.

Caroline Nokes.
Caroline Nokes. Photograph: UK Parliament/Jessica Taylor/PA

The Home Office has said it would only send unaccompanied child migrants to a third country in “very limited circumstances”. Responding to today’s report from the women and equalities committee (see 9.13am), a Home Office spokesperson said:

Through the illegal migration bill, we will stop the boats by detaining those who come to the UK illegally and swiftly returning them to a safe third country or their home country.

It is only right that we protect the most vulnerable by not creating incentives for criminal gangs to target specific groups.

We have amended the bill to make clear that an unaccompanied child under 18 can only be removed in very limited circumstances. Where a removal decision is made, detention will be for the shortest possible time with necessary support provisions in place.

Home Office should rule out sending migrant children to Rwanda, says Tory-dominated Commons committee

Good morning. The illegal migration bill, and the government’s policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda (which the bill supports), is facing fresh criticism this morning. As Rajeev Syal reports, yesterday the Home Office published a report suggesting that, instead of sending people to Rwanda, it might be cheaper for the taxpayer to just let them stay.

While the row about those conclusions continues, the Commons women and equalities committee has published a report saying that vulnerable people are particularly at risk from the government’s bill.

The committee, which has a Conservative majority, says:

The Nationality and Borders Act and illegal migration bill risk turning back the clock on policies intended to ensure immigration detention is used only as a last resort, and to reduce the risks of harm to vulnerable people. The government must set out how it intends to mitigate risks to vulnerable adults …

A significant number of vulnerable people, to whom the removal process would very likely be harmful, have received notices of the Home Office’s intention to remove them to Rwanda. Notices of intent should be suspended, and no new notices issued until all legal challenges to the policy are complete.

In particular, the committee says the government should rule out deporting migrant children to Rwanda. It says:

The risks of harm to children arising from the removal process outweigh any risks of damaging the intended deterrent effect of the policy – the government should abandon any intention of forcibly removing children to Rwanda.

Commenting on the report, Caroline Nokes, the Tory MP who chairs the committee, said in a statement:

This inquiry took place in the context of an asylum system under immense strain, with increasing numbers of claims and a staggering increase in the backlog of people waiting for a decision on their case.

We set out to understand the fairness of the UK asylum process, looking specifically through the lens of the UK Equality Act at the treatment of those with vulnerabilities arising from their protected characteristics.

We were disturbed by the Home Office’s inadequate management of risks of harm to asylum seekers with protected characteristics, including women, LGBT people, children and disabled people. Alarmingly, these risks will increase under the Government’s recent and planned reforms.

One of our biggest concerns is the treatment of children within the asylum system. Any intention to detain child asylum seekers under the Illegal Migration Bill and forcibly remove them to Rwanda must be abandoned. The risk of harm to children outweighs any perceived damage to the effectiveness of the Government’s policy agenda.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Keir Starmer takes part in a Q&A at a New Statesman conference.

Morning: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.

10am: Matt Hancock, health secretary from 2018 to 2021, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry.

10.10am: Executives from Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons and Tesco give evidence to the Commons business committee about food price inflation.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

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 PC or a laptop. 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.

Updated

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