Former home secretary Dame Priti Patel will give evidence to the Covid-19 inquiry, where she is likely to face questions about her approach to controlling the border and “heavy handed” policing of lockdown rules.
Dame Priti lobbied for stricter border controls in the early stages of the pandemic in an attempt to prevent the virus reaching the UK, but was overruled.
As home secretary, she defended the way police enforced lockdown measures, despite criticism of their approach.
She said she would “call the police” if she saw her neighbours flouting the rules and backed “strong enforcement”.
Just weeks into the first lockdown, on April 5, 2020, then-cabinet secretary Lord Mark Sedwill raised concerns with prime minister Boris Johnson about “heavy-handed enforcement by some police forces”, according to his witness statement to the inquiry.
On the issue of border controls, she reportedly told the Conservative Friends of India group in 2021: “On ‘should we have closed our borders earlier’ the answer is yes, I was an advocate of closing them last March.”
Other witnesses due at the inquiry on Thursday are Martin Hewitt, the former chairman of the National Police Chiefs’ Council and Jun Pang, policy and campaigns officer with human rights group Liberty.
