Covid Inquiry live: Matt Hancock grilled over affair scandal in awkward exchange

Matt Hancock has said he was opposed by a “co-ordinated” group that argued against lockdown in Parliament.

The former health secretary added that the need to maintain “parliamentary consent” was a reason why he thought a circuit breaker proposal was not the best way forward.

Mr Hancock told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry: “Those arguing against lockdown in Parliament were formulating a group – they were co-ordinated, they were campaigning, and this became more of a problem later on.

“And so we needed to keep parliamentary consent and public support. And that was one of the reasons that I thought in practice a circuit breaker proposal wasn’t the best way forward.”

In his first day of evidence yesterday, Matt Hancock defended his record as health secretary, hitting out at a “toxic culture” and “deep unpleasantness” at the heart of Government during the pandemic.

The former minister denied there had been “absence of a plan” and insisted his department “rose to the challenge” of responding to the biggest public health crisis in a century.

Matt Hancock was warned by his media adviser in early April 2020 that he may need to “get ahead” of newspaper “front pages demanding why we weren’t testing people in care homes” if people started to die from Covid in large numbers, the UK Covid-19 Inquiry has been told.

A WhatsApp message, sent on 4 April 2020 to Mr Hancock by his media adviser Jamie Njoku-Goodwin said: “On testing, do we need to have a specific strand/push on testing in care homes? We are testing hospital admissions and clinical patients at risk.

“Do we also need a push on testing people in care? Or at least have some sort of focused effort on testing people in care.

“I know it is complex and the people dying in care homes are often people who were near the end regardless, but I worry that if a load of people in care start dying, there will be front pages demanding why we weren’t testing people in care homes. Do we need to get ahead of this now?”

Mr Hancock’s WhatsApp response to the message was then read out. It stated: “Let’s have rapid advice on this tying together all the angles.”

Responding to the WhatsApps, the former health secretary told the inquiry: “The reason that we did not at that point have as much testing in care homes as many would have wanted, was that we didn’t have enough tests and the clinical prioritisation of who got tests in what order was absolutely something that I wouldn’t have interfered with.”

Matt Hancock has said he would most likely have been in favour of ensuring there were provisions in the lockdown rules to allow women in abusive relationships to seek sanctuary or respite at a friend or relative’s home – but that such a need was never brought to his attention.

The ex-health secretary was asked whether he had ever considered a lockdown provision to allow people to let their home be used as a place of sanctuary or respite for a friend or family member, given that in normal times people considering leaving abusive relationships will often turn to loved ones as opposed to refuges.

“I don’t recall that being brought to my attention, that consideration,” Mr Hancock told the inquiry. “I had a excellent team who cared very deeply about this subject and the impact of the regulations on people, as you say mostly women who are subject to domestic abuse and violence.”

He added: “I don’t recall that being brought to my attention. Had it been I’m highly confident that I would have said that we should have put in place such provision because the impact on the overall virus would have been relatively low because although the numbers are far too big they are, as a part of the population, relatively low.

“And in the same way that we realised that our initial regulations in terms of how they impacted funerals, for example, were much firmer in their interpretation on the ground than we had intended, and therefore changed them, that is the sort of thing I certaintly would have been open to considering.”

Scotland’s former first minister Nicola Sturgeon would communicate with the public “in a way that was unhelpful and confusing”, Matt Hancock has claimed.

The Covid-19 Inquiry was shown WhatsApp messages from Mr Hancock from July 2020, regarding communications around travel from Spain and quarantine.

When told that No 10 wanted to communicate the matter “ASAP”, Mr Hancock replied: “Me too. It will leak anyway – and the Scots will try to get their announcement out first.”

Asked by a representative of the Scottish Covid bereaved: “What is the issue with the first minister communicating that to the people of Scotland first?”

Mr Hancock said: “There were a number of moments when the first minister of Scotland would communicate in a way that was unhelpful and confusing to the public. And sometimes, [she] would leave a meeting and begin communication of a decision, for instance, sooner than agreed.”

He added: “We found it much more difficult when decisions went up to first minister level, particularly with Nicola Sturgeon. Because we would find that sometimes some kind of spin was put on what was essentially substantively the same decision. So it was a frustration, I’ve got to be honest about that.”

Matt Hancock has agreed that this decision to resign after his affair with aide Gina Coladangelo reflected that he understood the “deleterious consequences of rule-breaking” on public confidence.

So what were the Covid rules at the time? My colleague Joe Middleton reports:

Matt Hancock has defended his decision to discharge hospital patients into care homes without testing for Covid as “rational and reasonable”.

Mr Hancock said of the 19 March 2020 decision: “The testing capacity was much too small at this point … on 17 March I had taken responsibility for testing from PHE into the Department [of Health] because it wasn’t growing fast enough. So I knew there was a problem and I was acting on it.”

He added: “If I’d left them in hospital they were more likely to have caught Covid because of the risk of nosocomial infection, and … it was rational and reasonable to make sure they were in the safest place they could be.

“I fear – and this is the only choices between bad options here – that if we had left those patients in hospital, those who were medically fit to discharge, there is a high likelihood that more would have caught Covid and the problem could have been bigger.

“I have gone over and over in my head the decisions that we took … every decision was a choice between difficult options and nobody has yet brought to me a solution to this problem that I think, even with hindsight, would have resulted in more lives saved. If there is one I want to know about it.”

It was known that there were 37 outbreaks in care homes when the policy of discharging hospital patients without testing was announced on 19 March 2020, a document reveals.