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The lockdown three weeks earlier would have reduced the number of deaths by 90% during the first wave of Covid, former Health Secretary Matt Hancock said.
Hancock said in the Covid inquiry that, in hindsight, the UK had locked down much earlier.
He also said a “toxic culture” existed in government driven by Dominic Cummings, the PM’s chief advisor.
But he denied accusations he lied to colleagues during the pandemic.
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Cummings, who left No 10 in December 2020 after falling out with then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has been scathing of Johnson-Hancock.
When presented with the chance to respond, Hancock called Cummings an “evil actor” who subjected the Department of Health to abuse while dealing with the onset of Covid.
He argued that he had to work in other departments, for example on school closures, and that his “hard cadres” were hampered by “a poisonous culture that we had to work with. “
He said Cummings sought to take away Johnson’s strength while ministering at key meetings.
There was an “unhelpful” assumption that “when something was complicated or challenging. . . there was guilt and guilt,” Hancock said.
The Mid-Suffolk MP’s health secretary from 2018 until June 2021, when he was forced to resign after breaching Covid guidelines.
He suspended as a Conservative MP, after appearing on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here in 2022 and later said he would not stand for re-election.
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During his testimony, Hancock said it is possible that “many, many lives” would have been saved if the UK government had introduced the first coronavirus lockdown around March 2, 2020, rather than March 23.
However, he stressed that there is still “enormous uncertainty” and that so far only 12 cases are known in the country.
He told the inquiry that he spoke “in hindsight” and vigorously defended his role in the pandemic and that of the government he headed.
“From the middle of January, we were trying to effectively raise the alarm,” he said, adding: “We were trying to wake up Whitehall to the scale of the problem.”
Pushed on when he advised Mr Johnson that immediate action would be needed to contain the virus, Mr Hancock said he raised the alarm bell on 13 March.
However, the solicitor in charge of the investigation, Sir Hugo Keith KC, disputed this claim, noting that it was not discussed in the March 13 access in Mr. Hancock, Pandemic Diaries.
Hancock responded that the evidence was only revealed after the publication of his diary and cited an email he sent to the Prime Minister calling for a “strategy of repression”.
Sir Hugo argued that this did not amount to calling for an immediate lockdown.
When asked about pre-prepared lifestyle plans in the event of a pandemic, Hancock responded that they existed, but reiterated his previous statement that they were “adequate. “
Mr Hancock will give his testimony on Friday.
Johnson will testify at the inquest on Dec. 6 and 7. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is also expected to testify before the end of the year.
The inquiry has been bruising for the politician, with past witnesses accusing Mr Hancock of “nuclear levels” of overconfidence and a lack of honesty.
Helen MacNamara, a senior civil servant during the pandemic, said he would say things that would turn out not to be the case.
Sir Patrick Vallance, a former chief scientific adviser, said Hancock “has a habit of saying things for which he has no basis. “
Mr Hancock said there was no “evidence whatsoever” that he lied during the pandemic.
During the session, the inquiry showed excerpts from Sir Patrick’s diary describing “massive internal disorder” within the Department of Health and reported that Sir Mark Sedwill, then head of the civil service, complained of the department’s “glaring lack of control”.
Hancock has been criticised for saying at the start of the pandemic that a “ring of protection” had been introduced around care homes.
He said he used the word to refer to moves that add up to giving the sector £3bn and offering equipment.
However, he turns out to agree with the advice that protections are not “an unbroken cycle. “
He also told the inquiry that he did not know about the “Eat Out to Help Out scheme” – whereby the government subsidised people to go to restaurants in the summer of 2020 – until the day it was announced.
He said he had concerns about the effect this would have on infection rates, but said he did not express them publicly because he took “collective responsibility. “
Hancock also asked about possible conflicting evidence about when the government knew that other people without symptoms could simply transmit the virus.
Referring to a report by the US’s Centre for Disease Control, he said there was not clear evidence until the beginning of April and up to then he had been advised not to base policy on the assumption that transmission could be asymptomatic.
Hancock said his “biggest regret in hindsight” was not ignoring the advice.
“I’m in the field, let’s worry about asymptomatic transmission. The frustration is that naturally, from their point of view, and here I put myself in their shoes, the scientists at Public Health England said we didn’t have any concrete evidence. “
The inquiry was shown messages between Chief Medical Officer Sir Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick in which they suggest the government had known about asymptomatic transmission.
Posting on X while the investigation was ongoing, Mr Cummings said Mr Hancock was “talking nonsense”.