Afternoon summary
Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, has brushed aside claims that he should have done more to force No 10 to take the Covid threat seriously in February 2020. (See 3.24pm.)
David Cameron, the new foreign secretary, has used his maiden speech in the Lords to defend his record as PM and to make a jibe about Boris Johnson’s “illusions”. (See 4.18pm.)
The Low Pay Commission has said that next year the “national living wage” will be worth two-thirds of the median wage, putting the UK “at the forefront of comparable economies”. As the government announced it was accepting the LPC’s recommendations, which will see the main rate rise to £11.44 per hour (see 4.54pm), Bryan Sanderson, the LPC chair, said in a statement:
The national living wage has delivered an improved standard of living to thousands of people who care for our children and elderly, work in farms and shops and at many other essential jobs. These efforts over the lifetime of the NLW mean over £9,000 PA more to a full-time worker without any increase in unemployment.
This hasn’t been easy for employers, with the economy facing a range of unprecedented challenges in recent years. The high degree of political and economic uncertainty has made assessing and forecasting the performance of the economy, and therefore our task, very difficult. It is a tribute to my fellow commissioners that we have continued to achieve consensus.
Our new recommendation of a national living wage of £11.44 attempts to steer a path through this uncertainty and achieve the government target of two-thirds of the median wage, an outcome which if accepted would position the UK at the forefront of comparable economies.
Updated
Hunt says 'national living wage' going up to £11.44 per hour next year
In his speech to the Conservative party conference Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, said the “national living wage” would be going up to at least £11 per hour. This afternoon the Treasury has announced that, in the autumn statement tomorrow, it will rise to £11.44 per hour. It says:
The chancellor will deliver a pay rise of more than £1,800 a year for a full-time worker, as he confirms that the national living wage will increase by over a pound an hour from April.
The almost 10% pay boost, from £10.42 to £11.44 an hour, is the biggest cash increase in the national living wage in more than a decade and fulfils the government’s manifesto pledge to end low pay for those on the national living wage.
Eligibility for the national living wage will also be extended by reducing the age threshold to 21-year-olds for the first time. A 21-year-old will get a 12.4% increase, from £10.18 this year to £11.44 next year, worth almost £2,300 a year for a full-time worker.
National minimum wage rates for younger workers will also increase. 18-20-year-olds will get a wage boost to £8.60 per hour – a £1.11 hourly pay bump.
The Department for Business and Trade estimate 2.7 million workers will directly benefit from the 2024 national living wage increase.
The Treasury says this means the government has now achieved its target of lifting the “national living wage” to two-thirds of median earnings by 2024.
Updated
Today’s Covid inquiry hearing is over. But Prof Sir Chris Whitty has not finished giving evidence, and he will be back at 9.30am tomorrow.
Readers who will have been following earlier Covid inquiry hearings will be wondering why no juicy WhatsApp messages have been cropping up today. Whitty provided an answer, Eleanor Hayward from the Times reports.
“You have probably had the privilege of reading my rather dull - compared to other people’s - WhatsApps”, Whitty tells the inquiry
“You have probably had the privilege of reading my rather dull - compared to other people's - WhatsApps”, Whitty tells the inquiry
— Eleanor Hayward (@eleanorhayward) November 21, 2023
Whitty says it was hard to get ministers to understand implications of exponential growth
Back in the Covid inquiry, Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England and chief medical adviser for the government, said that one problem he had in early 2020 was getting ministers to understand how quickly Covid could spread. He said:
I think that one of the things that we really did not find easy to get across – and I found this surprising given that so many people in both politics and in the official system are trained in economics – is the extraordinary power of exponential growth to get you from small numbers to large numbers very quickly.
People just don’t get that … I think they got it a bit more now because of having seen it. But certainly prior to this pandemic, I think people just didn’t understand how quickly you move from ‘it’s actually very small numbers to it’s actually very large numbers and doubling every few days’.
Cameron takes swipe at Boris Johnson's 'allusions' in maiden Lords speech defending his own record as PM
David Cameron did not have anything very new or profound to say about foreign policy, or the CPTPP bill, in his maiden speech in the House of Lords. But it was an accomplished speech full of jokes, flattery, self-deprecation, self-aggrandisment and score-settling. Here are the highlights.
Cameron suggested that he would be willing to let himself by questioned by MPs. He said:
I look forward to answering noble lords’ questions monthly and appear before all the relevant committees. I recognise my responsibilities to this house and I’m happy to consider other appropriate mechanisms so that parliament is able to scrutinise all the work of my department.
That seemed to be reference to suggestions he should take questions from MPs as foreign secretary in Westminster Hall.
He defended his record as prime minister. He said:
As prime minister, I learned that the respect we command overseas also depends on success at home. We certainly didn’t get everything right. But over six years, we did smash some of the big political orthodoxies, showing you can grow the economy and cut carbon emissions, you can cut the deficit and create jobs, you can achieve the best school results in the poorest areas.
And you can start to build a society that is multi-ethnic, multiracial and proud and patriotic.
And today with a British Indian prime minister at our helm, we have a good opportunity to do all of those things and ensure we stand taller in the world and stronger too.
Cameron did not mention the fact that the biggest political orthodoxy that he managed to smash when he was PM – the assumption the UK would remain in the EU – was one he wanted to keep intact. This passage was also interesting because it does not fit with the thrust of Rishi Sunak’s speech to the Conservative party conference, in which he complained of “30 years of a political system which incentivises the easy decision, not the right one” (including Cameron’s government, by implication).
He said he had always admired the House of Lords as a “patient, diligent and considered complement” to the Commons. And he joked about the “ornate, carved, wooden panels” in the chamber, saying it was a significant upgrade compared with his “now infamous shepherd’s hut”.
He compared himself to Margaret Thatcher, saying that in her maiden speech in the Lords she pointed out that she was responsible for giving peerages to so many of its members. He was in the same position, he said. He joked about being to blame “for putting space here at a premium”.
He joked about the large number of Lib Dem peers (81), saying he always told Nick Clegg that his party “would feel the benefit of participating in the coalition for many years to come”.
He claimed he first set foot in the Lords as parliamentary researcher, when he listened to Lord Macmillan making his maiden speech attacking Margaret Thatcher. He said he would not be doing the same to his successor.
He praised Rishi Sunak as a “strong and capable prime minister”. And he said that his experience as an ex-PM would help Sunak “in meeting the vital challenges that we face as a country”.
He jokingly dismissed Boris Johnson’s chances of a comeback. By leading the leave campaign, Johnson did as much as anyone to end Cameron’s premiership. In a reference to his nemesis, Cameron said:
It was a surprise to be asked [to be foreign secretary]. I have not been sitting like some latter day de Gaulle at Colombey-les-Deux-Églises waiting to be asked to – how should I put it – to take back control. Nor am I Cincinnatus hovering over my plough. I leave all classical allusions, and indeed illusions for that matter, to another former prime minister with whom I shared a number of educational experiences.
When Johnson resigned, he compared himself to Cincinnatus, a Roman leader who was called out of retirement to rule again as a dictator.
Updated
Cameron delivers maiden speech as peer, saying he hopes to spend much longer in Lords than his 15 years in Commons
In the House of Lords David Cameron is now delivering his maiden speech as a peer, opening the debate on the trade (comprehensive and progressive agreement for Trans-Pacific partnership) bill.
He was sitting on the frontbench for at least half an hour before he started, grinning broadly and clearly pleased as punch with his new role.
His speech (so far) is mostly about himself, and his comeback, but also full of flattering comments about the House of Lords. (Nothing about the CPTPP so far.) I will post a summary soon.
He started by saying that he was only in the Commons for 15 years, and that he looks forward to spending many more years as a member of the Lords.
(Clearly, he is not taking Labour’s threat to abolish the Lords too seriously.)
Updated
Whitty under pressure as asked to explain why he did not do more to warn No 10 of Covid threat in February 2020
Back at the Covid inquiry, Prof Sir Chris Whitty says the government could have “moved up a gear” in February 2020 when the first warnings came that a pandemic could lead to more than 100,000 or more deaths.
He says, if someone had warned that a terrorist attack might kill this number of people, the system would have reacted very differently.
Q: Why did you not pick up the phone to No 10, and tell them they were not understanding the magnitude of the threat?
Whitty says there was a debate about exactly what the reasonable worst-case scenario was [ie, whether it was 300,000 deaths or 600,000 deaths.]
He says the system is not designed to understand threats of this kind [ie, health ones, not security ones].
Q: That was a systemic failure, wasn’t it?
Whitty says it is not clear what difference it would have made if No 10 had responded with more alarm. But he goes on:
Under ideal circumstances there would have been a different response.
Hugo Keith KC tries again.
Q: Given there was a system failure, why didn’t you and others aware of the nature of the threat email No 10, or “shout out your concern”?
Whitty says it is difficult to know where you can go, once you have talked to all the people you have talked to.
He says Sir Patrick Vallance says in his written statement he tried to get No 10 interested via Dominic Cummings.
He says he is not convinced, if he had acted differently, the outcome would have been different. But he goes on:
Nobody looking at this could say this was ideal.
They have stopped for a break.
Dame Heather Hallett, the chair, tells Whitty that he will have to return tomorrow, because they won’t get through all his evidence today.
Updated
Humza Yousaf tells Sunak UK should recognise state of Palestine
In the Scottish parliament this afternoon MSPs are debating an SNP motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Ahead of the debate, Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, released an open letter to Rishi Sunak saying the UK should recognise the state of Palestine. He said.
The UK needs to work with the international community to break, once and for all, the political impasse that has condemned Israelis and the Palestinians to successive cycles of violence. This would be assisted were the UK to recognise the state of Palestine within the 1967 borders, as over 130 members of the United Nations, including nine members of the European Union, have done and as the new Spanish government has pledged.
Recognition would offer hope to Palestinians that a just and durable political solution is possible. It would make it plain to the Israeli government that a military solution is illusory and the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza is unacceptable.
Yousaf also made the same argument in an open letter to Keir Starmer.
Updated
Back at the Covid inquiry, Prof Sir Chris Whitty says, looking back at the start of the crisis, he thinks it would have been good to consider asking people returning from China in early 2020 to self-isolate, regardless of symptoms.
But he says he is not sure what difference this would have made, because Covid was also getting into the UK from European countries.
Sunak rejects UN criticism of new law allowing severe sentences for climate activists who disrupt traffic
Rishi Sunak has rejected a statement from a United Nations official saying lengthy sentences for climate protesters could curb freedoms in the UK, PA Media reports.
No 10 spoke out in response to Ian Fry, the UN’s special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change, raising concern at the sentences handed to Just Stop Oil campaigners who scaled the Dartford Crossing in October 2022.
Morgan Trowland, 40, and Marcus Decker, 34, were jailed for three years and two years and seven months respectively after using ropes and other climbing gear to scale the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, causing gridlock across two days when police closed it to traffic.
Fry, in a letter to a UK government representative sent in August, said the sentences were “significantly more severe than previous sentences imposed for this type of offending in the past”.
The special rapporteur said he was “particularly concerned” about the sentencing of the “environmental human rights defenders” in relation to their “rights to freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly and association”.
He added: “I am gravely concerned about the potential flow-on effect that the severity of the sentences could have on civil society and the work of activists, expressing concerns about the triple planetary crisis and, in particular, the impacts of climate change on human rights and on future generations.”
But Sunak rejected Fry’s comments in a post on X.
In his post Sunak said:
Those who break the law should feel the full force of it.
It’s entirely right that selfish protesters intent on causing misery to the hard-working majority face tough sentences.
It’s what the public expects and it’s what we’ve delivered.
Those who break the law should feel the full force of it.
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) November 21, 2023
It's entirely right that selfish protestors intent on causing misery to the hard-working majority face tough sentences.
It's what the public expects and it's what we've delivered. https://t.co/lHtxkqsgqM
As PA reports, last month Trowland and Decker were denied the chance to challenge their sentences at the supreme court. PA says:
In July the protesters lost an appeal over what their lawyers said was the “extraordinary length” of their jail terms for the direct action on the crossing over the River Thames in south-east England.
In their ruling, the judges acknowledged the “long and honourable tradition of civil disobedience on conscientious grounds” and that the sentences handed to Trowland and Decker went “well beyond previous sentences imposed for this type of offending”.
But the lady chief justice, Lady Carr, said the jail terms were “not excessive” and reflected “parliament’s will” under new laws enacted under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act last year.
The legislation introduced a new “fault-based public nuisance offence for what obviously will include non-violent protest behaviour, with a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment”, the appeal judges said.
Carr said the sentences met the “legitimate” aim of deterring others from such offending.
Updated
Back at the Covid inquiry Hugo Keith KC, counsel for the inquiry, is asking Prof Sir Chris Whitty about an email he sent to No 10 on 28 January 2020 warning about the risk of a pandemic.
Whitty says he was concerned at the time that government might opt for a “middle way” solution.
He says he wrote this to make the point that that would not be an option. He wanted ministers to know that, if Covid was not contained in China, there would be a pandemic.
And he says he wanted them to know that, once there were in a pandemic situation, stopping the virus would not be possible. It could be delayed, but not stopped.
Updated
The UK and South Korea are to launch talks on a new trade deal and sign a diplomatic accord as part of the state visit by Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol,, PA Media reports. PA says:
The business and trade secretary, Kemi Badenoch, will begin negotiations with her Korean counterpart, Bang Moon-kyu, at the UK-Korea Business Forum at Mansion House on Wednesday.
They will also announce £21bn of investments committed by Korean businesses in green energy and infrastructure projects across the UK.
The UK secured a free trade deal with South Korea in 2019, with the agreement largely aimed at keeping trade flowing post-Brexit and removing uncertainty.
The UK hopes to secure modern digital provisions in a new deal because most of its services exports to Korea are delivered digitally.
Updated
Whitty says he thinks, even if a proper plan for Covid had been in place, that might not have helped.
That is because it would “almost certainly have been the wrong plan, and could even the even have slowed us down”.
He says, in a crisis like this, governments need to adapt.
What matters is having the right building blocks available, he says.
Whitty says, in a pandemic, capability counts for more than the plan. “Capability trumps plans every single time,” he says.
The Covid inquiry is back.
Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England and chief medical adviser for the UK, says his view in early 2020 was that the government’s flu pandemic plan was not going to be of much use.
That was partly because Covid was not the same as flu, and partly because the plan was not adequate for the needs of a 1918-style flu pandemic either.
Turning away from the Covid inquiry for a moment, Tory feuding is continuing today. Damian Green, the former first secretary of state who leads the Conservative One Nation Caucus, warned at the weekend that the party would be in trouble if it were captured by the right. He posted a link to an article about his comment on X.
Leaning too far right puts off voters, Tory centrists sayhttps://t.co/y6mcUCOkv4
— Damian Green MP (@DamianGreen) November 20, 2023
In response Dame Andrea Jenkyns, the rightwinger who is calling for a vote of no confidence in Rishi Sunak, has given an interview to GB News in which she says people like Green should “sod off to the Lib Dems”. She said:
This One Nation Group make up the majority of the parliamentary party but these are the ones who didn’t want Brexit, who didn’t want Boris, who didn’t want Liz Truss, so they’re not really in tune with the British public. Isn’t Damian Green the one who got deselected by his own association back in February?
I don’t think the Tory party are going far enough [to the right] actually …
I want to stop net zero, I want strong borders, I want strong policing like the 80s where they used to drag protesters off the streets.
Updated
You don’t have to be a cabinet minister or a top civil servant to give evidence to the Covid inquiry. The inquiry has asked me to point out that it is actively encouraging members of the public to submit evidence of their own experience of the pandemic, through its Every Story Matters programme. Do click on the link for details. What people will say be read and analysed, and the points made will be considered by the inquiry as it mulls over its conclusions. Anonymised versions of the evidence will also be archived.
Updated
Whitty does not accept he was wrong not to take Jonathan Van-Tam's warnings about Covid on 16 January 2020 more seriously
Q: On 14 January 2020 you were alerted to a report about human to human transmission of coronavirus.
Whitty says, by that point, they realised person to person transmission was happening in some settings. But that does not mean a pandemic was inevitable, he says.
Q: The trigger for government action had been met.
Whitty says that was the trigger for government taking it seriously. He says Sage met about a week later.
In any week, he says he gets dozens of alerts about outbreaks. He says he has a system of triggers indicating which ones need to be taken seriously.
Q: By 16 January you knew there was a coronavirus with a 12% hospitalisation rate, and human to human transmission. Shouldn’t you have been taking it more seriously?
Whitty says at this point they had only known about this for two weeks.
Q: Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, your deputy, says in his witness statement he thought at that point this would lead to a pandemic. He said he was seriously concerned. He said he went to you, and he said you argued it might escalate, but that for now you should wait and monitor the situation.
Whitty says Van-Tam is quite “instinctive” in his decisions. He says if he had asked him what evidence he had there was going to be a pandemic, he would just have said it was instinct.
So Jonathan, and I think he would agree with this, is quite instinctive in some of these decisions – very often, rightly.
He is a very able epidemiologist and thinker in this area, but if I had said to him, ‘OK, what is the evidence on which this is going to be a pandemic …?’ he would have said ‘it just feels like that to me’.
That is quite a narrow basis on which to make quite big decisions.
He says it is not clear to him that, if he had acted differently on 16 January, there would have been a better outcome in the end.
Q: Was Van-Tam’s instinct right, and yours wrong?
Whitty does not accept that. He says government was already taking the issue seriously. He says he cannot see how the outcome would have been different if they had responded differently then.
He says, if the result of this inquiry is to set up a “hair trigger” response to threats like this, that would not be an advance.
Government was already engaged, he says. He says “wait and see” does not mean it was just him and Van-Tam having a chat. Scientists were monitoring the data, he says.
He says he can look back on moment in the Covid crisis where, if a different decision had been taken at an inflection point, the outcome might have been different. But he says he does not see 16 January as one of these moments.
He says, if you go to government just on the basis of gut feeling, without data, you do not get much response.
He says “waiting and seeing” only meant a few days.
He says acting early may always seem like the right thing to do. But he says that does not take into account the cases where deciding to do nothing turns out to be right.
They have now paused for lunch.
Updated
Whitty accepts decision-making 'chaotic' in No 10 under Johnson - but claims other countries had similar problems
Q: How efficient was the administrative system around the PM?
Whitty says the civil servants did a good job in very difficult circumstances. The political system was more mixed, he says. It was “quite often chaotic”, he says. But he says he thinks it was probably chaotic in other governments.
He says civil servants should not say who their fantasy PM would be. They should operate with the person who is there.
Q: There is clear evidence that the PM had difficulty taking decisions. Did you see that?
Whitty says the way Johnson took decisions was “unique to him”.
Q: That’s a euphemism. What do you mean?
Whitty says he does not want to make a commentary on politicians.
Q: It must have been apparent to you that the government had trouble taking decisions and sticking to them. This “degree of oscillation and chaos is apparent”.
That’s correct, says Whitty.
But he says “it’s a matter of record that many other nations had similar problems”.
Updated
Q: Did ministers every cherrypick scientific advice?
Yes, says Whitty. He says that was inevitable.
But he says that did not apply to the principal decision-makers in government: Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock, Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove.
Updated
Whitty says the CMOs were able to request that alert levels were changed. He says they knew ministers were unlikely to reject the recommendations.
And he says he also offered public health advice directly to the public as CMO.
Q: Were ministers clear that it was for them, as elected representatives, to take these decisions?
Whitty says, in the early stages, some of them needed help to see this was their role. They saw it as a technocratic exercise. Whitty says he saw this as a political exercise.
There was no pushback on this, he says.
Q: Were there ever any good or easy options?
Whitty says all the options were bad. Some were very bad.
And any option would last for a long time. This took some time for some people to internalise.
And people were going to die whatever happened, he says.
Q: So the mantra that government was following the science was a bad one?
Whitty says at first and Vallance welcomed this claim, because it meant ministers were listening to scientists.
But he says they came to the view that it was a bad description of the process because it blurred the dividing line between scientific advice and political decision-making.
Updated
Q: Did you hold yourself back from giving advice on what you thought government should do? Did you only give advice on public health implications?
Whitty says he and Patrick Vallance were blunt about public health advice. But they never told the government what it had to do, because those were political decisions.
Whitty says he would like to see scientists advising government offered protection from legal action
Keith says he does not want to cover the disgraceful abuse directed at Sage scientists. But he asks if Whitty was concerned that scientists advising goverment might be open to some legal action.
Whitty says he is concerned about this. He says the legal position is not clear, because the advisers are not government employees. He says he would like to ensure that they get protection from legal claims. That should be “solvable”, he says.
Back at the hearing Hugo Keith KC, counsel for the inquiry, is getting to the point in early/mid-March 2020 when No 10 realised a new approach was needed.
Whitty accepts this was in response to the data changing. He says, in situations like this, data trumps modelling.
Updated
Vallance says Sunak was wrong to suggest Sage did not realise Treasury official listening to its meetings
Turning away from the hearing for a moment, Chris Smyth from the Times has found a passage in Sir Patrick Vallance’s lengthy witness statement (published by the inquiry last night) in which he seems to contradict something said by Rishi Sunak.
In an interview with the Spectator last summer Sunak claimed that Sage members did not realise the Treasury had an official listening to their meetings. The interview took place during the Tory leadership contest and the interview was about Sunak’s scepticism about lockdown measures (also opposed by the Spectator).
Vallance, the Sage co-chair at the time, says the Treasury official attended Sage meetings because he actively encouraged it.
Patrick Vallance suggestions Rishi Sunak was misleading in his Tory leadership claims about SAGE pic.twitter.com/8rWc5iX0RJ
— Chris Smyth (@Smyth_Chris) November 21, 2023
In his evidence yesterday Vallance also cast doubt on Sunak’s claim not to be aware of scientists’ concerns about his “eat out to help out” scheme.
Updated
Keith asks if it was realistic to expect Whitty and Patrick Vallance to relay to ministers the full extent of what experts were saying in Sage meetings.
Whitty says writing up the whole meeting would have taken too long.
But he says, because he and Vallance were both summarising what was said, that provided “some degree of error prevention” because, if one of them missed something out, the other could correct.
The hearing has resumed.
Whitty said that when Dominic Cummings was allowed to listen to Sage meetings, that caused a row. But Whitty said he personally thought this was a sensible arrangement.
UPDATE: Whitty said:
I thought it was perfectly sensible that if one of the most senior advisers to the prime minister, if she or he wished to, could listen in on Sage, struck me as a sensible thing to do … they could ask questions potentially, but try to bias the answer that was given and that would be extremely unacceptable, but that wasn’t the situation, in my view, that happened.
Updated
Whitty says Sage could have considered lockdown earlier - but also suggests proposing such radical policy job for ministers
The key charge against Prof Sir Chris Whitty, and Sage (the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies – the expert body he co-chaired) is that they should have considered the case for a lockdown much earlier than they did, and put that proposal to government. Hugo Keith KC put this argument to Whitty in the final minutes before the break. Whitty’s response was nuanced.
Whitty said it was “reasonable” to argue that Sage should have considered the case for a full lockdown earlier. When Keith first put his question, Whitty said that although restrictions had been imposed in the past in previous pandemics, full lockdowns had not been used. He went on:
The idea of essentially, by law, locking down all society is not something which had previously been used. You could argue, and I think it is reasonable to argue, that that is something we should have cottoned on to an earlier stage.
In reality, my view is that the band of situations where that would be relevant is in fact relatively narrow.
But Whitty also suggested that it was for government, not scientists, to propose such a radical intervention. He accepted that Sage had not considered the case for a lockdown in early and mid-February.
Did Sage look in detail at a mandatory lockdown … in early and mid-February? I think the short answer is no. That’s pretty clear from the minutes. We did, on the other hand, look at ways of keeping households separated.
Whitty said China had provided an example of a full lockdown approach. He went on:
You can argue that we should have gone for a maximalist model. I don’t want to put anyone into a difficult position, but were we to have been instructed by ministers, ‘what would happen if we did a Chinese approach?’, that would be something that Sage would undoubtedly have looked at.
The question actually, I think, is would it have been appropriate for a group of scientists to come up with what I consider is quite a radical proposition to put to government? I think that’s a debatable question.
Updated
Q: In your witness statement you talk about Sage having a “failure of imagination” at the very start. What did you mean by that?
Whitty says he wanted Sage to consider the experience of other pandemics. He was aware of the danger of a second wave in winter. That is what happened in previous flu pandemics in the 20th century. That is something that was not in the modelling, but had happened in the past.
And he says, in the past, a lot of other NPIs (non-pharmaceutical interventions) had been used, such as self-isolation, quarantine and closing schools.
But full lockdowns had not been used, he says.
He says it is reasonable to argue that Sage should have considered them.
Q: So if there was a failure to think about the prospect of a “mandatory stay-at-home order” being an option, if Sage had thought it was an option, would the government have considered it?
Whitty says, by the middle of March, Sage was saying the government would have to significantly reduce interactions by households. Whether or not to do that by law was a political decision.
He says this approach had been used in China.
Q: Should Sage have proposed a lockdown as an option?
Whitty says China “had thrown the kitchen sink at this”. He says his view was that the UK needed to find a way of cutting interactions.
He says you could argue that Sage should have gone for a “maximalist model”. He says if ministers had proposed that, they would have had a look at it.
But he says it is “debatable” whether Sage should have taken the initiative, he says.
And they are now stopping for a break.
Updated
Whitty says Sage was not the only route by which scientific advice was provided to government. It is important to stress that, he says. He says the government had many other sources of advice.
Q: In your witness statement, you says as co-chair of Sage you are likely to be biased in its favour. Were you aware of how other countries get scientific advice?
Whitty says he was well aware of how other countries do this.
In general, the UK system of integration of science into government is still short of where it should be, by “quite some distance”, but it is better than in some other countries, he says.
The Sage system “had some pluses and minuses”.
But he could not see another system that made him think “if only we had that, we would be in a much better shape”.
Q: There is a tension between having a body small enough to take decisions, but large enough to represent a wide range of views.
Whitty says, at first, it was too Sage. Patrick Vallance recognised that and responded. Arguable it later got too large, Whitty says.
He says it is important to stress Sage is not a fixed body. People come on to it and go off it, depending on what the problem is.
Whitty says the countries that could scale up testing quickly, like South Korea, had invested in that capacity. He says South Korea had had a bad experience with Mers.
For a country like the UK, it was much harder, he says.
Q: Were you consulted on the decision to disband Public Health England?
Whitty says he was just told this was happening. He thought PHE had acted professionally.
Whitty says the CMOs for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland sometimes gave collective advice when they wanted to give a collective view on something important.
Q: Were there any significant scientific disagreements between you?
Not that he can recall, says Whitty.
But he says they sometimes had to think about things quite hard. Sometimes they were 49%/51% calls.
The most difficult decisions were about borders, he says.
Q: There have been claims there was not proper collaboration between the four nations.
Whitty says the CMOs, and the public agencies, did a lot together. And the presidents of the medical colleges worked together.
But, he says, that does not mean that at an operational and political level there weren’t differences.
Updated
Keith asks Whitty about a comment he gave in a speech on 12 February 2020. He shows it to the inquiry.
Whitty defends what he was saying.
Keith says Whitty was talking about the risk of spending money on something that might not happen. He suggests that would be overreaction.
Updated
Whitty says the precautionary principle is often misunderstood.
Where there are no downsides, the precautionary principle justifies acting; for example, telling people to wash their hands.
But that does not apply in cases where acting does have downsides, he says.
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Whitty says he does not accept that he warned against over-reacting at start of Covid inquiry
Whitty says doctors have to give advice on both sides of equation. If a patient needs an operation, even if a doctor thinks it is worthwhile, they have to give advice about the potential downsides, he says.
He suggests this influenced his thinking on advice about lockdown measures.
Q: To what extent did the need for data impact on your advice early on?
Whitty says, by the time Sage was giving advice, he was supporting the Sage advice.
From 16 March onwards, Sage was very clear about the need for action.
But, when you give advice, it is also important to acknowledge the downsides too, he says.
Q: There is a difference between accepting the downsides, and saying you should not overreact. Did you warn against overreacting?
Whitty says he was not deviating from the position of Sage.
The view of Sage was that, to avoid deaths, action was necessary.
But it was also clear that downsides would be involved.
He says ministers needed to know that. If they were not aware, there was a risk of them reversing course.
He says this approach was appropriate. Any doctor or civil servant would accept this was the correct thing to do.
Q: Did Sage itself warn against the dangers of overreacting from early January to early March?
Whitty says he does not think Sage would have used the phrase overreaction. It was about emphasising the downsides.
Q: The documentary evidence seems to suggest you were prominent in warning of the risk of overreacting. Is that fair?
Whitty says he rejects Keith’s characterisation of this as “overreaction” because that implies he thought the reaction should not happen. His concern was to make sure the downsides were understood.
I’ve rejected and I will continue to reject your characterisation of this as ‘overreaction’, because that implies that I thought that in a sense the action should not happen.
What I thought should happen is that people should be aware that without action very serious things would occur but the downsides of those actions should be made transparent.
I don’t consider that incorrect.
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Whitty says he was wary of introducing Covid interventions too early because he knew poor people would lose out most
Q: Were you co-chair of Sage, or was Sir Patrick Vallance the lead chair?
Whitty says he and Vallance agreed that it was best to have a permanent chair. So Vallance chaired the meetings when he was there. But technically they were co-chairs.
Q: Did you try to form a common position on advice from Sage, and on technical advice to government?
Yes, says Whitty.
He says in one respect he was a member of Sage. He gave opinions in his own capacity.
But, once Sage had agreed a position, he saw it as his role to express the Sage position – not his own, personal view. Vallance also expressed the collective Sage view.
Q: Was it hard to ensure you were always singing from the same hymnsheet?
Whitty says the Sage process helped establish a common position. Where Sage did not consider a matter, he and Vallance tried to agree a common view before they advised the government.
Q: Was there a tension between you and Vallance? Jeremy Farrar said this in his book.
Whitty says Farrar, who is a colleague and a friend, had a book to sell. He says the differences between him and Vallance were small.
Q: Farrar in his book, and Vallance in his diary, say you were more cautious, and more inclined to wait until moving to measures.
Whitty says they should be “very careful of the narcissism of small differences”. The differences were very small.
But he was very clear that the impacts of measures such as cocooning (a precursor to lockdown) would be highest in areas of deprivation.
He says, with the benefit of hindsight, he thinks they went “a bit too late” in terms of introducing measures in the first wave.
He says he was probably further in the “let’s think through the disadvantages” camp as the impact of interventions was being considered.
UPDATE: Whitty said:
Well Sir Jeremy, who is a good friend and colleague, had a book to sell, and that made it more exciting, I’m told.
My own view was that actually the differences were extremely small
And the main one – and Sir Patrick, I thought put it very well – was that I saw as part of my role within Sage, in my first role as an individual, to reflect some of the very significant problems for particularly areas of deprivation, I saw for many years the actions that we were taking in terms of what was going to be advised to ministers to consider for what they did next.
And that I think that was an appropriate thing for me to do and Sir Patrick also thought it was appropriate.
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Q: Did the system of international collaboration work well?
Whitty says, in the circumstances, it worked as well as could be expected.
Q: Can you give examples?
Whitty says, for every new wave of Covid, the first information came from the countries involved.
And he says, with the original Wuhan wave, they at first relied on Chinese science.
There were many groups. But they all involved sharing information.
When the UK had the Alpha wave (called the Kent variant at the time), it was the UK sharing its information with other countries.
Q: Was there no aspect on the pandemic on which you did not advise?
Whitty says he would not put it like that. He says he felt it important to advise on issues where advice from a scientist or doctor would be useful.
He says there was a limit to what they could do. There were only 20 people in his office, he said.
Q: But there were no issues on which you could not advise?
Whitty says quite often his office said they thought it was not right for them to advise on a particular matter.
Whitty says, as CMO (chief medical officer) for England, he matches what the CMOs do in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. But he says he also advises the government on health on UK matters, and as CMO for England he has certain international responsibilities.
He says, when Covid first emerged in January, Prof Jonathan Van-Tam led on the response. He was one of three deputy chief medical officers, and his responsibility was health protection. But, by the end of January, Whitty says he was leading on this issue
Keith is asking about the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), which is headed by Whitty.
Q: Did your ability to be CMO as well as CEO of NIHR help?
Whitty says overall this was beneficial. He was able to combine the strategy for medical research with strategy for Covid. But he says doing both roles meant he was “quite stretched”.
Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England and chief medical adviser for the UK, is giving evidence now.
Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel for the inquiry, is asking the questions.
Dame Heather Hallett, the chair, points out that Whitty has already given evidence. Here is a report of his evidence in module one, which looked at pandemic preparedness.
Keith starts by saying that, for module two, looking at how the government responded to the pandemic, Whitty has produced a corporate witness statement and a fourth personal one. These run to 340 pages, he says. He says Whitty has also given the inquiry hundreds of documents.
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UK borrows less than expected this year as Hunt lines up giveaways
The UK government borrowed less than expected in the first seven months of the financial year as Jeremy Hunt puts the last-minute touches to a series of pre-election giveaways in his autumn statement tomorrow, Phillip Inman reports.
If you are one of those Conservative MPs who believe that the secret to electoral success is tax cuts (are there any Tory MPs who don’t?), then the splash headlines in this morning’s papers will be very welcome. Here are three of them from rightwing papers.
TELEGRAPH: Sunak pins hopes on ‘Thatcher’ tax package #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/Geqhrh3EEi
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) November 20, 2023
EXPRESS: PM: We can and will cut taxes #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/XCZ5MbgsRO
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) November 20, 2023
🇬🇧 Return Of Tax Cutting Tories
— 𝙵𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚝 𝙿𝚊𝚐𝚎𝚜 𝚃𝚘𝚍𝚊𝚢 📰 (@ukpapers) November 21, 2023
▫PM says it's time to reward hard work in tomorrow's Autumn Statement - and there could be even MORE giveaways in the spring
▫@JasonGroves1
▫https://t.co/4iKGap9dUp 🇬🇧#frontpagestoday #UK @DailyMailUK pic.twitter.com/JyfVAgtTVv
Laura Trott, the new chief secretary to the Treasury, was giving interviews this morning and she confirmed the papers were right to anticipate tax cuts. She told Times Radio:
We have turned a corner. Inflation has halved. That is really significant for people at home. We know how tough things have been.
Real wages are, for three months, now ahead of inflation – again, that’s really important to kind of making a difference to how people feel.
So we can now talk about tax cuts and focus on growth, and that is what we’re going to be doing.
Patrick Vallance says he considered resigning during Covid because of threats to his family
In one of his witness statements published last night, Sir Patrick Vallance also said that he had considered resigning during Covid because of threats he was facing. As the BBC reports, Vallance said:
Like many others I received abuse and threats and I was concerned for the wellbeing and safety of my family.
At times those factors did lead me to question whether I should continue.
I also found people breaking the lockdown rules very difficult and considered what I should do in response, but decided that I would help most by continuing with my job.
Government accused of economic blackmail after omitting Northern Ireland from latest levelling up funding
The government has been accused of “economic blackmail” after omitting Northern Ireland from levelling up funding because of its political vacuum.
Michael Gove’s Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said yesterday the region would not receive anything from the latest allocation, which will fund 55 projects in England, Wales and Scotland. “Given the current absence of a working executive and assembly, the government is not proceeding with this round of the levelling up fund at this time,” it said.
Stormont collapsed in February 2022 when the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) walked out to protest post-Brexit trading arrangements that treat Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK.
Sammy Wilson, a DUP MP, said the funding cut was an “outrageous” attempt to blackmail the party into reviving power-sharing. He also accused the government of siphoning money to Conservative-held seats in England.
Conor Murphy, a Sinn Féin assembly member, said the decision was a “cynical attack on ordinary people” and that Northern Ireland was paying the price for the DUP’s “reckless boycott”.
Claire Hanna, an SDLP MP, said: “The Conservative government don’t ever need an excuse to under-invest in our region but the DUP have given them that cover on this particular fund.”
Northern Ireland received allocations in two previous rounds and was led to expect another allocation - the department placed advertisements in local media that used images of Belfast with the declaration “Levelling Up is here”.
Chris Whitty expected to say he regrets saying people would not tolerate long lockdown in Covid inquiry
Good morning. Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, and chief medical adviser for the UK, is giving evidence all day to the Covid inquiry. The session starts at 10am, but we have already had an insight into one of the points he might make from a witness statement from Sir Patrick Vallance published by the inquiry last night. In it, Vallance says Whitty regrets saying “fatigue” might stop people putting up with a long lockdown.
This was in one of three witness statements from Vallance published by the inquiry last night, after the government’s former chief scientific adviser finished giving evidence in person.
In his evidence Vallance said Whitty had initially been more reluctant than others to support an early lockdown at the start of the Covid crisis. This wasn’t a great secret because in those very early press conferences Whitty argued that, if the government were to introduce restrictions on what people could to too early, there was a danger that people would get tired of complying, and start reverting to normal behaviour, at a point where Covid was still a threat. This is what Vallance is referring to when he talks about Whitty introducing the concept of “behavioural fatigue”.
This later became highly controversial not just because it was wrong – people were willing to comply with lockdown restrictions for a long time (perhaps surprisingly) – but also because there does not seem to be much evidence to support the concept in the first place. Scientists on SPI-B (the Scientific Paendemic Insights group on Behaviour) subsequently said the idea did not come from them.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, and chief medical adviser for the UK, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry.
10.15am: Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, gives evidence to the Commons Treasury committee about the Bank’s monetary policy reports.
11.30am: No 10 holds a lobby briefing
After 3pm: David Cameron is due to speak in the Lords for the first time as foreign secretary in a debate on the trade (comprehensive and progressive agreement for Trans-Pacific partnership) bill.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line; privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate); or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
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