Former top UK official Mark Sedwill sorry for ‘heartless’ comparison of COVID with chickenpox – POLITICO
LONDON — The former head of the British civil service apologized Wednesday for a “heartless and thoughtless” suggestion Brits should hold “chickenpox parties” to promote herd immunity at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Mark Sedwill — who ran the civil service from 2018 until 2020 and served as cabinet secretary — told the U.K.’s COVID-19 inquiry Wednesday that he had made the remark, but insisted he had “at no point” believed coronavirus “was of the same seriousness as chickenpox.”
Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s former top aide, has previously claimed Sedwill made the suggestion at the start of the pandemic.
Pressed on Wednesday, Sedwill said: “These were private exchanges and I certainly had not expected for this to become public.
“I understand how, in particular, the interpretation that has been put on it, it must have come across as someone in my role was both heartless and thoughtless about this, and I genuinely am neither.
“But I do understand the distress that must have caused and I apologize for that.”
The COVID-19 inquiry has exposed deep rifts in the British government during the early stages of the pandemic.
Earlier in Wednesday’s session, the inquiry was shown an email exchange highlighting tensions between political appointees and permanent civil servants.
The exchange — dated March 11, 2020 — shows Johnson’s then-top aide Cummings asking for a daily meeting in the Cabinet room chaired by either him or the No.10 director of communications, Lee Cain.
Cummings warned that the current set-up involved “a load of people from comms baffled about POLICY and unable to make decisions or even knowing who is in charge of key policy areas.”
But, in a curt reply, Sedwill warned the government was “not running a dictatorship here and the PM [prime minister] is not taking nationally significant decisions with a bunch of No10 SpAds [special advisers] and no ministers, no operational experts and no scientists.”
He added: “If necessary. I will take over the 8:15 slot and chair a daily meeting myself.”
Quizzed on the exchange by the inquiry’s counsel, Sedwill explained it expressed “pretty pungently my views about collective government.”
