Rishi Sunak would have put “enormous pressure” on Boris Johnson not to have an autumn lockdown – while school closures could have been avoided, the UK Covid inquiry has been told.
Former British health secretary Matt Hancock was questioned by Hugo Keith KC over the tier system for managing Covid spread and the point it was decided a second national lockdown was needed in 2020.
He expressed the view that, with hindsight, schools may not have needed to close if action had been taken to control virus spread much earlier.
A WhatsApp exchange from October 2020 between Mr Hancock and Cabinet Secretary Simon Case showed how Mr Hancock was pressing for information from a meeting on October 30 that he claims he was “blocked” from attending.
It suggested Mr Sunak – then chancellor – was in favour of tighter controls when it came to schools, rather than the closure of all shops.
Mr Hancock wrote: “When then? Rishi is in the room – contrary to the stupid rules – so the PM will be under enormous pressure to not do enough once again.”
Mr Case replied: “I don’t know what is happening in the room – I am 90 miles away.
“Rishi has already resigned himself to the choice ahead – I spoke to him earlier.
“He is relatively open on regional or national (not least because regional is so wide that impact is pretty similar to national now).
“His only question (and a fair one) is about nonessential retail – where obviously we have no evidence of transmission.
“He thinks better to do something in secondary schools (where we know transmission takes place) instead of closing all shops (where we know it doesn’t seem to).”
Mr Hancock told the inquiry that if the British government had acted more swiftly in the autumn of 2020, school closures could have been avoided in January 2021.
He said that “on reflection and with hindsight”, he thought “if we’d have taken action sooner, in September of 2020, then we might, for instance, have avoided the need to close schools, which in the end we had to as cases were so high by January”.
He added: “In the November lockdown we didn’t shut schools, and other than the emergence of the Kent variant, it did get R below one.
“So it shows the argument I was making then, sadly, turned out to be accurate, which is if you don’t lock down early, you have a tougher lockdown with more economic damage.”
