Matt Hancock under scrutiny once again following Covid inquiry
The former health secretary Matt Hancock has delivered much anticipated evidence to the Covid-19 public inquiry, where he admitted the flaws and mistakes in the UK’s pandemic strategy, calling it “completely wrong”.
- He said he was “profoundly sorry” for each death and criticised the governmement’s strategy as “woefully inadequate”
- He admitted his apology would be hard to accept, but was “honest and heartfelt”
- He said it was a “colossal” failure to be focused on questions such as “can we buy enough body bags?” and “where are we going to bury the dead?”, overlooking whether or not the spread of the virus could be stopped
- He said he was “assured that [the UK] had the best system in place in the world” in regards to its pandemic plan, despite the clear oversight of lockdowns
- As well as being critical of the government’s plan, he criticised the WHO for advising that “we should not have lockdowns”
- He also blamed the WHO for “[writing] into the international health regulations that you shouldn’t close borders”
- He said: “The doctrinal flaw was the biggest by a long way because if we’d had a flu pandemic, we still would have had the problem of no plan in place for lockdown, no prep for how to do one, no work on what, how best to lock down with the least damage.”
- He went on to say, “It is central to what we must learn as a country that we’ve got to be ready to hit a pandemic hard: that we’ve got to be able to take action – lockdown action if necessary – that is wider, earlier, more stringent than feels comfortable at the time.”
- He admitted it was “terrible” that the government didn’t know if care homes had the necessary protections in place at the time, but noted that the social care sector relied on decision-making by local authorities: “~I didn’t have the levers to act”.
- He said, “I bear responsibility for all the things that happened, not only in my department, but also the agencies that reported to me as secretary of state.”
Right-wing outlets revived the great anti-lockdown debate on the basis of Hancock’s comments, sensationalising the idea that the UK ought to brace itself for the worst lockdowns imaginable. Left-wing publications largely focused more on the impact of deaths and the impact of loss on the public.
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Metro
front page, 28/06/2023
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- Fascinatingly misleading: Hancock stated that medicines for intensive care were “within hours” of running out at the peak of the pandemic, but they did not because of work done in 2019 in preparation for a no-deal Brexit.
You can watch the full inquiry below.
