Covid inquiry live: Hancock ‘wanted to decide who should live or die if NHS became overwhelmed’

The top civil servant in the Department of Health said that energy focused on the “blame game” in government would have been “better spent solving the problems the pandemic was bringing”.

Sir Christopher Wormald told inquiry lead counsel Hugo Keith KC that Matt Hancock believed it was important to be “optimistic and aspirational”, adding he was not aware himself of the extent of views about the then-health secretary’s truth-telling.

“There were a lot of people who said that the secretary of state was over-optimistic about what would happen and over-promised on what could be delivered,” Sir Christopher said. “That was said really quite a lot. I think it was a very small number of people who said that he was actually telling untruths.”

“He was always clear that he was doing it for a positive reason. So setting a very aspirational target, not necessarily expecting to hit it, but to galvanise the system to do more. Whether that’s a good thing to do or not, that is a matter of perception.”

Sir Christopher acknowledged that mistrust between Number 10, the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health would have been damaging.

“The amount of time and energy that seemed to be taken up very early in the pandemic on the blame game – that energy would clearly have been better spent solving the problems the pandemic was bringing.”

Dominic Cummings has launched another blistering attack on former health secretary Matt Hancock, after the former No 10 official faced a grilling over his expletive-laden WhatsApp messages during the pandemic.

Following his testimony earlier this week, Mr Cummings asked on Twitter whether the true problem was either him “calling Hancock ‘a lying c*** killing people’” or “Hancock actually being a lying c*** killing people”.

Matt Hancock’s permanent secretary Sir Christopher Wormald said he had “one conversation” with the then health secretary about colleagues believing he regularly said things that were untrue.

But Sir Christopher said the conversation was “mainly about the views of Dominic Cummings”.

“What I was seeing at the time was a very small number of people who were not Mr Hancock’s friends, saying this,” Sir Christopher added.

The former permanent secretary in the Department of Health has said Matt Hancock often said things that could be considered “overpromising as opposed to untruths”.

Sir Christopher Wormald is being grilled by the Covid inquiry’s lead counsel Hugo Keith KC about why so many people have told the inquiry Mr Hancock was untrustworthy,

“I don’t think there was any doubt that some people thought that about him,” Sir Christopher said.

“I suspect he will be surprised by how widespread it was,” he added, citing evidence given by former top civil servant Helen MacNamara.

But Sir Christopher stuck to the line that he never witnessed Mr Hancock saying things which proved to be untrue.

The former permanent secretary in the Department of Health said there were “a very small” number of instances in which officials complained about Matt Hancock not telling the truth, reports our political correspondent Archie Mitchell.

But Sir Christopher Wormald said he “did not witness or come across” Mr Hancock having said anything “actually untrue”.

“There were a lot of people who said the secretary of state was over-optimistic,” however, he admitted.

It comes after days of allegations about Mr Hancock being a liar during the Covid inquiry.

That’s all for Lord Simon Stevens … up now is Sir Christopher Wormald, the Department of Health’s former permanent secretary.

The former boss of the NHS said in “early spring” 2020, the NHS became aware of the higher death rate among Black, Asian and minority ethnic Covid patients.

Then, at the beginning of April, the health service’s medical director Prof Stephen Powis raised the issue with Public Health England and chief medical officer Chris Whitty, Lord Simon Stevens told the Covid inquiry.