‘Eat out to help out’ launched without telling official in charge, Covid inquiry hears

Simon Case, arriving to give evidence to the Covid inquiry in London. He likened No 10 during the pandemic to ‘a rats’ nest’. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA

The UK’s most senior civil servant has set out the chaos at the heart of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street, saying good officials were “just being smashed to pieces” while he was not warned in advance about the “eat out to help out” scheme.

In a day of often damning testimony to the inquiry into the pandemic, Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, said Johnson’s No 10 had been involved in the “worst governing ever seen” in the UK.