Five key revelations from the Covid inquiry this week and why they matter

five key revelations from the covid inquiry this week and why they matter

Clockwise from top left; Sir Chris Whitty ; Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam; Professor Dame Angela McLean giving evidence at the Covid inquiry. and former chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance giving evidence to the Covid inquiry (Photo: PA)

The inquiry into the Government’s handling of the pandemic is reaching a critical stage, with ministers at the heart of decision-making in 2020 to appear in the coming days.

There have been several striking revelations from the evidence of top scientific advisers this week. Here are the most crucial and why they matter:

Rishi Sunak is under increasing pressure over Eat Out To Help Out

Four of the most senior scientific advisers working in government at the time of the pandemic have revealed they were not consulted about Rishi Sunak’s plans to encourage people to return to restaurants and cafés after the first lockdown, under the policy known as Eat Out To Help Out.

Former chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance said if he and Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, had been consulted they would have warned it would drive up cases following its roll-out in August 2020. Sir Patrick said it was “not difficult” to see that the scheme did drive transmission, while former deputy chief medical officer Sir Jonathan Van-Tam said “it didn’t seem sensible to me”.

Current chief scientific adviser Dame Angela McLean told the Treasury at the time: “Could you not find some other way to stimulate the economy?”. Mr Sunak, in his own witness statement, says that none of the advisers raised concerns when they did find out about it – although they have responded by saying it should have been obvious from the many internal briefings about the risks of encouraging people to mix.

The failure of the then chancellor to consult scientific advisers raises questions over the current Prime Minister’s judgement during the pandemic, whether he acted responsibly and could be trusted to do so again if another pandemic hits while he is in charge. Eat Out To Help Out was not just an economic plan, but one which had an impact on public health. And if politicians do not listen to the advice of experts that advise the Government, it could undermine trust among voters.

Lockdown should have been introduced earlier

While some scientists have long argued that lockdown should have been imposed earlier than 23 March 2020, the four top scientific advisers, in their evidence this week, agreed. It emerged there was a difference of opinion at the time between Sir Patrick, who favoured earlier action, and Sir Chris, who was more cautious about the risks of locking down to the economy, education and the impact on other health conditions.

But even Sir Chris admitted to Lady Hallett’s inquiry that “with the benefit of hindsight, we went a bit too late on the first wave”. Yet this is not just about hindsight. At the time, there were plenty of warnings from scientists of the need to take quicker action. Emails showed Sir Jonathan Van-Tam warned of a “significant pandemic” from the middle of January – more than two months before Boris Johnson imposed lockdown.

Professor Neil Ferguson emailed Sir Chris a month before lockdown saying it was a case of “when not if” the UK would be engulfed by a full epidemic. Mr Johnson has been criticised in the past for not getting a grip on the crisis early enough, but this week’s evidence shows that his advisers, and the government machine, was also not – as Sir Chris told the inquiry – sufficiently “electrified” to take action. One of the purposes of this inquiry is to learn lessons, so a future government does not make the same mistakes if and when another pandemic hits. The question this raises is, if the problem is entrenched, will anything really change?

Post-lockdown policy was also chaotic

As restrictions were being lifted in spring 2020 after the first lockdown, and Mr Johnson and his ministers were keen to get society and the economy moving again, senior scientists were concerned that things were going too far and too fast, the inquiry heard. Sir Patrick, Sir Chris and Sir Jonathan signed a letter to Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, in May 2020 warning that the “totality” of lifting lockdown restrictions across society meant there was a “severe risk of a second wave”.

And according to Dame Angela the second lockdown in November that year “felt like March all over again – we delay and delay and then have to slam the brakes on at the last possible moment”. While a second wave of any virus was likely, if not inevitable, the advisers argued that lifting measures so much – as well as the Eat Out discount meals scheme – and then waiting too long for a second lockdown meant cases and hospital admissions were far higher than they needed to be.

Sir Jonathan said that by autumn 2020 “it was clear that we were losing control of the virus bit by bit”. This meant that when the Alpha variant emerged – and started to push up hospital admissions in December – the NHS was already struggling with the second wave as the third one hit. If ministers had been more cautious in their decision-making, maybe lives could have been saved.

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak allegedly had a callous attitude to Covid victims

There did not seem to be much of this caution by autumn 2020, however. One of the more shocking revelations of this week were diary entries by Sir Patrick detailing alleged views by Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak about people at risk from the virus. On 25 October, Sir Patrick quoted Dominic Cummings, No10 senior adviser, as saying “Rishi thinks just let people die and that’s okay” while Mr Johnson was said to have argued that people vulnerable to Covid “have had a good innings” and “most people who die have reached their time anyway”.

While both former and current prime ministers are yet to be questioned about these statements, if they are true it casts their decision making in a stark new light: did they really do enough to prevent deaths and hospitalisations from the pandemic?

Schools policy was ‘chaos’

One issue that has not had a lot of scrutiny at the inquiry so far is education – and there will be a separate part of the inquiry looking into this issue at a later date. But Sir Patrick’s diaries gave a glimpse of what he said was the “chaos” around the closure of schools throughout the pandemic.

Mr Johnson was said to have described the then education secretary’s plan for schools to reopen after the first lockdown as “feeble”, while in September 2020 Sir Patrick wrote there was “complete chaos over schools and what they should do” and in January 2021, on the eve of the third lockdown, the chief scientific adviser said “schools is a complete mess largely due to DfE”.

This evidence matters because children’s education has been severely impacted by the pandemic and school closures. There has been an increase in mental health problems among children since the pandemic, headteachers have called for more catch-up funding – which Mr Sunak as chancellor turned down – and tens of thousands of pupils now do not regularly attend school.

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