The “box office” inquisitions that will bring Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings before the Covid-19 inquiry have been shunted back a month until November to prevent them clashing with the political conference season.
The eagerly awaited appearances of those in charge of the pandemic response will lay bare tensions and disagreements at the heart of government, including over the severity and timing of lockdowns, the rushed contracts awarded for huge amounts of personal protective equipment (PPE), school closures and policies such as Sunak’s “eat out to help out” scheme.
The inquiry also wants to understand the culture that was allowed to develop in Downing Street and Whitehall at the time, which ultimately led to the Partygate scandal.
The second, and most eagerly awaited, part of the inquiry on “core UK decision making and political governance” had been expected to see the key political leaders summoned early next month.
But such is the anticipated interest, and potential for political fallout, that it was decided to delay their appearances by several weeks in order not to disrupt or torpedo the conferences, and also so that the likes of Sunak would not have competing demands for their time.
Instead, the current and former prime ministers, Sunak and Johnson, as well as Johnson’s former adviser Cummings and the health secretary, Matt Hancock, will now be called to give evidence in November, probably around the time of the king’s speech on 7 November – when Tory strategists had been hoping to in effect relaunch the Sunak premiership in the run-up to a general election – or the autumn financial statement on 22 November.
All the main participants have been sent long lists of written questions to answer before their appearances in the witness box.
The inquiry has also demanded to see other information, including emails and WhatsApp messages, to gain the fullest picture of what was going on in government at the time.
A total of 150 questions was sent to Johnson by the inquiry, which is chaired by the former high court judge Heather Hallett. One, which is bound to form a key part of verbal questioning, asks: “Why did you not attend any Cobra meetings in relation to Covid-19 prior to 2 March 2020, given the seriousness of the emergency?”
By this stage, with the Covid virus spreading across the world, Johnson had failed to turn up to a single meeting of the special emergency committee on the unfolding crisis.
Another, on an issue potentially more problematic for Sunak, was: “What discussions did you have with the then chancellor about the Eat Out to Help Out scheme prior to its implementation in August 2020?”
The scheme, which offered financial incentives for people to go out to restaurants again, cost £850m and was subsequently linked to a jump in Covid cases that autumn. No epidemiologist was officially consulted on the scheme beforehand. Last summer, Prof John Edmunds of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who was a member of the Sage committee of advisers to ministers, told the Observer that the scheme had been a “spectacularly stupid idea and an obscene way to spend public money”.
