Afternoon summary
Rishi Sunak has insisted that workers should not view AI as a threat to their jobs. He made the comment in a press conference at the end of his AI safety summit (see 4.21pm) where he also announced the creation of an AI Safety Institute to “carefully test new types of frontier AI before and after they are released to address the potentially harmful capabilities of AI models”. And he said governments and companies have agreed a new strategy on AI safety testing. In a news release summarising it, No 10 says:
In a statement on testing, governments and AI companies have recognised that both parties have a crucial role to play in testing the next generation of AI models, to ensure AI safety – both before and after models are deployed.
This includes collaborating on testing the next generation of AI models against a range of potentially harmful capabilities, including critical national security, safety and societal harms.
They have agreed governments have a role in seeing that external safety testing of frontier AI models occurs, marking a move away from responsibility for determining the safety of frontier AI models sitting solely with the companies.
Chris Wormald, the permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, has told the Covid inquiry that a full lockdown may have been avoided if the government had issued its non-statutory stay at home request earlier. (See 3.18pm.) The inquiry was also shown a message from Mark Sedwill, the then cabinet secretary, showing that on 12 March 2020 – less than a week before Boris Johnson ordered the nation to stay at home – Sedwill was pushing a “herd immunity” strategy and saying “we want people to get [Covid]” (just not all at once). (See 2.59pm.)
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Bruno Le Maire, the French finance minister, has described the AI safety summit as “a great success for the UK”, Christina Gallardo from Sifted reports.
Was it a mistake not to invite more AI startups to the #AISafetySummit?
“I strongly believe this summit has been a great success for the UK and for the prime minister Rishi Sunak,” @BrunoLeMaire replies.
Was it a mistake not to invite more AI startups to the #AISafetySummit?
— Cristina Gallardo (@gallardo_ortega) November 2, 2023
"I strongly believe this summit has been a great success for the UK and for the prime minister Rishi Sunak," @BrunoLeMaire replies.
Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser, says he has been vindicated by the publication of a message at the Covid inquiry today showing that on 12 March 2020 – less than a week before Johnson ordered the nation to stay at home – Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, was pushing a “herd immunity” strategy and saying “we want people to get [Covid]” – just not all at once. (See 2.59pm.) Cummings was one of the No 10 figures most influential in pushing for an alternative, lockdown strategy. He said on X:
When I first revealed the ‘chickenpox parties’ horror in 2021 remember No10 lied and said never happened, Cummings liar etc.
Today we found out the Perm Sec in charge of fighting covid was pushing chickenpox parties ‘in every meeting’ & to the country’s most senior official, who then tried to get the PM to announce the parties to the nation.
This explains a massive amount of why wave 1 was a total shitshow but because it makes clear the deep state was responsible for this, not Boris, it will probably get buried.
Even if you support herd immunity plan, the whole point was to DELAY - not ACCELERATE WITH PARTIES!!!
This was on any objective basis an insane plan & is a catastrophe for the civil service
When I first revealed the 'chickenpox parties' horror in 2021 remember No10 lied and said never happened, Cummings liar etc.
— Dominic Cummings (@Dominic2306) November 2, 2023
Today we found out the Perm Sec in charge of fighting covid was pushing chickenpox parties 'in every meeting' & to the country's most senior official,… pic.twitter.com/pJ7ViWA8RH
Cummings also claims this shows why the nation should be grateful to him and his Vote Leave allies in No 10.
all of you fuckers who whine about Vote Leave face this fact -
on 12 March the DHSC Permanent Secretary was pushing chickenpox parties on the Cabinet Secretary who tried to get the PM to say this to the country that day - AND VOTE LEAVE SPADS STOPPED THE INSANE FUCKING PLAN
you can all say ‘thanks Vote Leave, thanks Ben Warner, thanks weirdos & misfits’ in replies
let’s hear it
all of you fuckers who whine about Vote Leave face this fact -
— Dominic Cummings (@Dominic2306) November 2, 2023
on 12 March the DHSC Permanent Secretary was pushing chickenpox parties on the Cabinet Secretary who tried to get the PM to say this to the country that day - AND VOTE LEAVE SPADS STOPPED THE INSANE FUCKING PLAN… pic.twitter.com/RuoY2wHMIR
Cummings may be anxious to see Vote Leave get some approval because polling shows that voters now are far, far more likely (by a margin of six to one) to view Brexit as “more of a failure” than “more of a success”.
But his argument does not work because, without Brexit, Johnson may well not have been PM in 2020, and the handling of Covid would probably have been in more competent hands.
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Rishi Sunak has arranged to hold a Q&A with Elon Musk later today. It will be shown on X (formerly Twitter), which is owned by Musk, at some point after 9pm.
Given Musk’s reputation as a maverick, there may have been some nervousness in No 10 about setting up the encounter and this tweet from Musk won’t help. Maybe that “sigh” signals disapproval, but he is publicising a cartoon gently mocking the AI safety summit, which Sunak has just described as something that will “tip the balance in favour of humanity”.
Sigh pic.twitter.com/jDDTkewbDL
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2023
Andy McDonald to sue Tory MP who accused him of ‘seeking to justify’ Hamas atrocity
A suspended Labour MP is suing the Conservative MP Chris Clarkson, who accused him of “seeking to justify the murderous actions of Hamas” in the Israel-Hamas conflict. Andy McDonald, who represents the Middlesbrough constituency, said much of what he has said over the last few days about recent events in Israel and Palestine had been “deliberately distorted and misinterpreted”. Aletha Adu has the full story here.
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Q: China was invited today. But it was not invited to your session today. So why should people trust them to comply?
Sunak says that is a glass half-empty take. He says China came, and signed up to the declaration. Inviting China was not an easy decision, he says. But he says he was taking a decision for the long term, and any serious conversation has to involve the leading AI nations.
And that’s the end of the press conference.
Q: You have said that people should not lose sleep about the lack of AI regulation. At what point should people start losing sleep?
Sunak says this summit has seen the world coming together. More is being done internationally than ever before. That is a significant achievement, he says.
He says AI can do incredible things. Every pupil should be able to have a personalised AI tutor.
But he says he wants that to happen with safeguards in place.
Sunak dismisses call for swift AI regulation, saying research needs to be carried out first
Q: Shouldn’t the government be legislating to control AI?
Sunak says government needs to act quickly. That is why he held this summit this year.
But legislating takes time, he says.
And, before you regulate, you need to do the research first.
He says the safety institute will do this work. It will provide the evidence base for legislation.
Other countries are also researching this, he says.
Ultimately, binding requirements will probably be necessary, he says. But those should be based on “empirical evidence” that will come from the testing.
Sunak does not mention Labour, but this answer is a reply to the challenge from the opposition released this morning. (See 9.18am.)
UPDATE: Sunak said:
The lesson is that we need to move quickly and that’s what we’re doing.
The technology is developing at such a pace that governments have to make sure that we can keep up.
Now, before you start mandating things and legislating for things I think A) by the way that takes time and we need to move faster, and we are, but secondly you need to know exactly what you’re legislating for and that’s why our safety institute is so important.
So far we’ve got the cooperation we need, but, of course, I think everyone would acknowledge, ultimately, binding requirements will likely be necessary, but it’s important that we do those in the right way and that needs to be based on empirical evidence that we’ll get from our testing.
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Sunak urges workers to view AI as 'co-pilot', not as a threat to their jobs
Q: Do leaders need to be more candid about the risks AI poses to jobs?
Sunak says he knows this is an anxiety people have. He says we should look at AI as “a co-pilot” more than something that will replace workers. It will help people do their jobs more effectively.
He says that is how he thinks of it.
Technology always has the ability to change labour markets. It is hard to predict.
But AI has already created 50,000 jobs.
He thinks technology like AI that enhances productivity will be good for the economy.
He says he also wants to focus on education, so that people get the skills they need.
UPDATE: Sunak said:
I know this is an anxiety that people have. We should look at AI much more as a co-pilot than something that necessarily is going to replace someone’s job. AI is a tool that can help almost everybody do their jobs better, faster, quicker, and that’s how we’re already seeing it being deployed.
I’m of the view that technology like AI which enhances productivity over time is beneficial for an economy. It makes things cheaper, it makes the economy more productive. But that doesn’t mean jobs can change.
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Q: What will you discuss with Elon Musk tonight? And is it not going out live because you are worried what he will say?
Sunak says Musk is a leading actor in AI. He has been concerned about this for a long time; he started talking about the risks 10 years ago.
But he does not just want to focus on Musk, he says. He says more than 100 leading AI nations were represented here.
Sunak says the UK is ahead of any other country in creating the tools to keep people safe.
Under the agreement today, AI models will be tested before they are released.
He says people should be reassured by this.
He concludes:
The late Stephen Hawking once said ‘AI is likely to be the best or worst thing to happen to humanity’. If we can sustain the collaboration we’ve fostered over these last two days, I profoundly believe that we can make it the best.
Because safely harnessing this technology could eclipse anything we’ve ever known.
If, in time, history proves that today we began to seize that prize, then we will have written a new chapter worthy of its place in the story of Bletchley Park and, more importantly, bequeathed an extraordinary legacy of hope and opportunity for our children and generations to come.
Updated
Rishi Sunak is speaking now.
He says this summit has considered the risk from AI. And he thinks it has “tipped the balance in favour of humanity”.
People said China should not be invited, and they would not reach an agreement. But they were wrong, he says. He says every country at the summit has signed the Bletchley Declaration.
He says Yoshua Bengio has agreed to produce the inaugural report from the new international panel on AI safety.
And he says a landmark agreement on testing the safety of new AI models has been agreed.
Updated
Rishi Sunak holds press conference at end of AI safety summit
Rishi Sunak is about to hold a press conference at the end of the AI safety summit at Bletchley Park.
Philip Dayle is now asking questions on behalf of the Federation of Ethnic Minority Healthcare Organisations (FEMHO).
Q: What measures were put in place to give extra protection to black, Asian and minority ethnic healthcare workers from the risk of Covid?
Wormald mentions two initiatives: a Sage study looking at this issues, and a Covid assessment tool looking at people’s Covid risk that took into account ethnicity.
Q: What was done to ensure that PPE was appropriate for all staff, incuding black, Asian and minority ethnic healthcare workers?
Wormald says that is a huge question. He says a module coming later will cover PPE, and he says it would be better to address that there, rather than give a short answer now.
And that is the end of Wormald’s evidence.
Heather Hallett, the chair, says that won’t be the last time they meet. He is likely to give evidence in further inquiry modules.
Anthony Metzer KC is now asking questions on behalf of groups representing people with long Covid.
Q: Why was a video about long Covid only released in October 2020?
Wormald says he does not know why the video only came out then, but guidance on long Covid was issued from June 2020, he says.
Wormald defends Feb 2020 advice saying care home residents 'very unlikely' to get Covid, saying it was based on advice at time
Brenda Campbell KC is now asking questions on behalf of Northern Ireland Covid Bereaved Families for Justice. She asks why the Department of Health and Social Care was telling care homes on 25 February 2020 that the risk of infection in care homes was very low, when at that point it was spreading around the world.
The advice said:
It is therefore very unlikely that anyone receiving care in a care home or the community will become infected.
Wormald says that was the clinical advice at that time. The number of cases in England was very low. So that was the description of how things were at that point. “It was not a prediction of the future,” he says.
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Wormald says full lockdown might have avoided if voluntary stay-at-home order had been issued earlier
Keith is now talking about the national lockdown ordered on 23 March.
Q: In your statement you say the voluntary NPIs of 16 March (the stay at home order) was not enough. You accept that if voluntary NPIs had been introduced earlier it is “possible” they may have worked, and a lockdown may have been necessary?
Wormald says they don’t know, and will never know, what impact that might have had, because that regime was only in place for a week.
He says there is some evidence the wave was “beginning to turn” after the 16 March measures were announced. People were also witnessing lockdowns in Europe. But some people were not complying.
Q: But you accept that lockdown might have been avoided?
“That is certainly a possibility,” he says.
He goes on:
With hindsight we were at least a week late with all the NPI decisions.
He says he is referring to the measures announced on 12 March (the instruction that people with symptoms should stay at home for seven days), on 16 March (the stay at home order) and on 23 March (the legally enforced lockdown).
He says he supported the timing decisions at the time, but with hindsight he thinks the government should have acted earlier.
That is the end of the questioning from Keith.
Updated
How No 10 was still pushing 'herd immunity' strategy on 12 March 2020 - four days before PM's 'stay at home' order
Keith shows an exchange of measures between Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, on 12 March 2020, and Wormald. In its Sedwill says No 10 still favours the “herd immunity” approach – wanting and expecting most people to get Covid, but just not all at once.
Keith asks why Wormald was agreeing with Sedwill at this point.
Wormald says the government had been following scientific advice. But he says his answer was “very loose”, and only referred to Sedwill’s final question.
12 March was a Thursday. On Friday 13 March and Saturday 14 March there were meetings at No 10 where officials realised a completely different approach was needed. On Monday 16 March Boris Johnson told people to stay at home, and on Monday 23 March a full lockdown was ordered.
Updated
Q: In your statement you say you now think the government placed too much store on shielding as a means of protecting people. Shielding was part of the “squashing the sombrero” approach. [Mitigating, delaying the spread, but assuming there would be one peak, with herd immunity present later.]
Wormald says he is surprised by talk of a one-peak plan. In all pandemics, there is more than one peak.
Keith says he does not want to argue about what this strategy [also sometimes called the herd immunity approach] is called. He wants to know about when it changed.
Wormald says until 16 March the government was following plans in the flu strategy. Then, between 16 and 23 March, the government switched from voluntary restrictions to a legal approach, with legal restrictions.
Q: Do you accept scientists were saying the mitigation approach would lead to many deaths?
Yes, says Wormald. On 12 March Sage discussed NPIs (non-pharmaceutical interventions – or lockdown-type measures).
Q: When did you realise the reasonable worst-case scenario was likely to happen, with the NHS being swamped?
Wormald says he agreed with the Sage advice received on 12 March. The debate was not about whether to impose further restrictions, but when.
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Keith asks why officials were told to work on an action plan on 10 February, with a view to publishing it on 24 February, when the global situation was changing very quickly.
Wormald says the action plan was revised before it was published on 3 March.
Q: By the time the action plan was published, one scientific committee (SPI-M) was saying sustained community transmission was already happening.
Wormald says the SPI-M view was not at that point the consensus view of scientific advisers. He says they did not confirm sustained community transmission until 12 March.
Keith asks about a Cobra meeting on 26 February. He lists the items that were discussed at the meeting, and asks why there was no debate about stopping the spread of the virus in the UK.
Wormald says at that stage they were focusing on the Covid action plan published on 3 March. The UK was still in the containment phase, he says.
Keith says a government paper on 28 February said a global pandemic was increasingly likely.
Q: Did you agree with that?
Wormald says he cannot recall reading that at the time. But at the time the view of the chief medical officer was that a global pandemic was very, very likely, he says.
Updated
Q: In March why did you complain about No 10 officials attending Sage?
Wormald says he was concerned about political advice being muddled with scientific advice.
Wormald says poor relations at top of government did affect its 'efficiency' during early days of Covid
Keith asks what the relationship was like with No 10 and the Cabinet Office in late February.
Wormald says, at officials level, relations were good. At the political level, they were “more up and down”, he says.
He says he does not think, and has never thought, that core decisions about what lockdown measures to implement were affected by these relationship issues.
But the “efficiency of the government machine” to do other things was affected, he says.
He gives two examples.
One involved No 10 and the Cabinet Office calling meetings at the same time, with the same people.
And the other was “multiple commissions” on the same issue.
Q: But the efficiency of the government’s response was affected?
In those instances, yes, says Wormald. But he says these issues were dealt with.
Updated
Keith says there were no plans in place ahead of Covid for a test-and-trace strategy. And that was because the flu plan did not require one?
Wormald accepts that.
Q: You knew this was not a flu virus. Where is the understanding that you did need a test-and-trace system?
That came much later, says Wormald.
Q: Why did it not come then. The UK invented a diagnostic test for coronavirus in the middleof January. But there was no scaling up of it.
Wormald says the scientific advice was not definitive about how good the tests were.
For quite a long time, it was not clear the tests picked up pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic cases. And people were not sure how good they were at detecting symptomatic cases either.
Q: Other countries turned testing into a practical proposition.
Wormald says countries in Asia did very well.
But even countries in Europe with good testing capacity did not stop the virus getting in, he says.
He says at this point in the crisis (early 2020, before lockdown in March), no one in the UK was proposing a test-and-trace system as an option.
Updated
Keith shows an email sent by Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, that was sent to Wormald and others on 28 January 2020 saying the pandemic could hit the UK within the next few weeks.
Q: With that knowledge available, why did the government not realise it was in real trouble?
Wormald says the department did realise that. Within a few days Whitty was warning of the risk of more than 100,000 people dying.
He says he has talked to Whitty about this. Whitty was saying that this was something that might happen; he was not making a prediction.
Q: But within a few days you learned that it had left China?
Wormald said the virus had left China, but only in small numbers. So at that point there was a chance of it being contained.
He says this is what he means by Whitty’s view being nuanced.
Updated
Keith says the Cobra minutes imply the focus was on communications, not practical measures. Why was that?
Wormald says they wanted to agree what they were going to advise the public to do. That public health communication is important, he says.
The Covid inquiry is back from lunch, and Hugo Keith KC, counsel for the inquiry, is asking Sir Chris Wormald, the permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), about meetings of Cobra, the government’s emergency committee.
Keith asks about a Cobra meeting on 29 January 2020.
He shows an extract from the minutes, showing two scenarios were envisaged: the virus not spreading from China; and the virus spreading from China.
Keith says the minutes suggest, if Covid escaped from China, it would spread widely.
Wormald says the chief medical officer’s views were a bit more nuanced, but that that is a fair summary.
Q: Did Cobra start thinking about what might be done to protect the UK if the virus did spread?
Wormald says that was what the meeting was for.
Q: Why is there nothing in the minutes about what measures might be taken?
Wormald says Cobra is there for dealing with immediate incidents. He says discussions about what measures might be in place, such as those proposed in the flu plan, were taking place elsewhere, including in the DHSC.
Updated
Anas Sarwar said in private meeting Starmer's original response to Israel-Hamas war lacked 'humanity', leak shows
Anas Sarwar furiously accused Keir Starmer of lacking “humanity” and “empathy” in his initial handling of questions about Israel’s attacks on Gaza, according to a leaked transcript of a meeting with pro-Labour Muslims.
The text, leaked to the Record newspaper, quotes the Scottish Labour leader saying Labour faced a long-term “repair job” to rebuild its reputation amongst Muslim voters because of Starmer’s hardline stance – since amended – on Israel’s right to attack Gaza.
Sarwar has already publicly made clear he was deeply unhappy with the UK Labour leader’s language, in a radio interview on 11 October, where he appeared to endorse Israel’s right to cut off water and power to Gaza.
He told the Record earlier this week Starmer had “hurt” Muslims by seemingly agreeing that Israel was in the right.
Starmer took a more nuanced stance on Gaza in a statement to the Commons on 16 October, the day Sarwar spoke to the Labour Muslim Network. But privately Sarwar was furious, the transcript shows. He said:
I can tell you first-hand how devastated people are right across the Muslim community. And that is not to negate or talk down the devastation felt in the Jewish community.
[That] humanity and empathy is, if we are being blunt about it, what has been missing from some of the statements which has caused so much of the hurt, where it feels as if there is an inconsistency, or a dehumanizing, or not seeing the value of one life to be equal to another life.
That empathy, which includes statements like ‘every life is equal’, ‘every Palestinian life is equal to every Israeli life’, ‘one life lost in Palestine, one life lost in Israel is one life too many’, and I think that level of humanity has been the bit that has been missing.
[I] made the point to senior colleagues – you can work out who they are – saying it shouldn’t take a Muslim voice in Scotland to be getting people to understand the impact on Asian communities across the country of what language is being said, but sadly that’s what it’s been, or that’s what it felt like.
Wormald rejects claim DHSC was chaotic and dysfunctional during Covid
Keith asked Wormald to respond to more general criticism of how the Department of Health and Social Care was equipped to deal with the Covid crisis.
He quoted from this extract from the witness statement by Mark Sedwill, cabinet secretary at the time, who said the NHS had “inadequate critical care capacity” for a public health crisis.
And Keith asked about this extract from the witness statement by Helen MacNamara, the deputy cabinet secretary at the time, who writes about concerns that DHSC appeared to be “overwhelmed”.
And Keith said Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, wrote in his diaries about the “chaos, operational mess, inefficiency, lack of grip in the DHSC”. Vallance also described the department as “ungovernable and a web of competing parts”.
Asked if he thought DHSC was chaotic or dysfunctional, Wormald said he did not agree at all.
But he said he did agree that there was a structural problem with the relationship between health and social care.
He said the department was under a lot of pressure, dealing with something unprecedented. He went on:
People were at times very down that we weren’t able to get on top of some of the problems. So I’m not going to say this was some sort of perfect, easy situation. But I don’t recognise the sort of chaos and dysfunction. I recognise people working incredibly hard in very difficult circumstances to get on top of huge, huge challenges.
The inquiry has now stopped for lunch. It will resume at 1.45pm.
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Wormald says people at top of government spent far too much time on 'blame game' at start of pandemic
Wormald says he did not realise at the time how many people in government felt Matt Hancock had not been honest. If he had known the extent of this, he would have been worried. He says he can now see that relations were more toxic than he realised at the time.
He also says too much time was spent on feuding and blame games.
One of my reflections so far, on the evidence that the inquiry has heard, is the amount of time and energy that appears to be taken up very early in the pandemic on the blame game – that energy would clearly have been better spent solving the problems that the pandemic was bringing.
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Wormald does not accept Hancock lied during Covid, but he says he challenged him over repeated claims he 'over-promised'
Keith says it has been claimed that Matt Hancock regularly said things during the pandemic that were not true. (See 10.01am.) Was Wormald aware of that?
Wormald says he was aware of a very small number of cases where Hancock was accused of saying things that were untrue.
He says he personally did not come across cases where Hancock said things that were actually untrue.
But he says there were also claims that Hancock was “over-optimistic about what would happen” and that he had “over-promised”. He says this was said “quite a lot”.
There were a lot of people who said that the secretary of state was over-optimistic about what would happen and over-promised on what could be delivered.
That was said really quite a lot. I think it was a very small number of people who said that he was actually telling untruths.
Wormald does not say at this point whether he thought this criticism was fair.
When pressed on this, Wormald says he thinks, when Hancock is asked about this, he will say that he genuinely believed he could do what he was promising. Hancock’s leadership style involved setting challenges to get the system to deliver, he says.
Wormald says he spoke to Hancock about this behaviour. He says Hancock deliberately set challenging targets.
He was always clear that he was doing it for a positive reason. So setting a very aspirational target, not necessarily expecting to hit it, but to galvanise the system to do more.
Q: What did you do when you were asking about Hancock saying things that were just not true?
Wormald says, when these issues were raised with him, he looked into it. He says he could not find evidence that Hancock had said things that were untrue.
For example, it was claimed that Hancock had said people were being tested on being discharged into care homes from hospitals. Wormald says he could not find evidence Hancock had made a false claim.
He says there were far more incidents that came into the category of “over-promising” rather than telling untruths.
Q: Did you ever say to Hancock lots of people think you are saying things that are untrue? Did you put it to him that this was damaging for trust in the department?
Wormald says he had conversations where he told Hancock people thought he was over-promising. Hancock always said a) he believed what he was saying was possible and b) he thought it was important to be optimistic and aspirational.
He says Hancock will be “surprised” at how many people were saying he said things that were not untrue. He knew Dominic Cummings thought he did not tell the truth, but he is likely to be surprised Helen MacNamara thought that. Wormald says he personally was surprised to hear MacNamara say that, because he had not heard that from her before.
Updated
Wormald starts by repeating what he said when he gave evidence to the inquiry during module one; he says he wants to express his regret to everyone who suffered, directly or indirectly, during Covid. And he expresses his thanks to NHS staff.
Asked to explain his role as permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, Wormald says it has three parts. He is chief executive at the department; chief adviser to the secretary of state, who holds the legal powers of the department; and accounting officer for the department, in charge of resources voted by parliament.
Keith asks about the chief medical officer’s role. Prof Sir Chris Whitty is the CMO.
Wormald says the CMO is an integral part of the department. He has permanent secretary rank. He is the chief clinical adviser to the secretary of state on matters relating to England. But he is also an adviser to the PM, and to cabinet, on clinical matters relating to the UK.
Updated
Chris Wormald, permanent secretary at the Department of Health, gives evidence to Covid inquiry
The next witness is Sir Chris Wormald, permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care.
Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel for the inquiry, is doing the questioning.
He says Wormald has submitted four statements to the inquiry running to hundreds of pages.
Updated
Updated
Philip Dayle is now asking questions on behalf of the Federation of Ethnic Minority Healthcare Organisations (FEMHO).
Q: When did it become clear that black, Asian and ethnic minority communities were disproportionately being affected by Covid?
Stevens says by early spring. He recalls a meeting in April where the issue was raised.
Q: Was that fast enough?
Stevens says he acted immediately concerns were raised with him.
Stevens has now finished his evidence.
Anthony Metzer KC is now asking questions on behalf of groups representing people with long Covid.
Q: Was the NHS concerned about long Covid by July 2020?
Yes, says Stevens.
Q: Would public health messaging have helped?
Q: Was the NHS worried by August 2020 that long Covid would create significant long-term costs for the NHS?
Yes, says Stevens.
Q: How did decision-makers respond?
Stevens says the Department of Health and Social Care was concerned about this. Ministers were looking at this.
Updated
Bethan Harris, counsel for Covid Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru, is asking questions now about hospital discharges.
Stevens says Matt Hancock decided on 11 March that people being discharged from hospitals into care homes would not be prioritised for testing. He says Hancock took this decision on the basis of clinical advice.
At the time, he says, there was a recognition that people could have Covid without being symptomatic. But he says there was “uncertainty” around the extent to which that happened.
He says the courts have looked at this issue. He says the courts decided that it was reasonable for ministers to prioritise testing in the way that they did, but that better guidance should have been offered to care homes about isolating people being admitted from hospital.
O’Connor is asking about PPE. He says PPE will be covered properly in another module, but he raises something Helen MacNamara said in her witness statement about whether PPE was suitable for women.
Stevens says MacNamara was right to raise this. He says the NHS was already looking at this issue at this point.
O’Connor asks if, as the inquiry heard yesterday, it is true that Stevens told Boris Johhson when Johnson asked about this that there was not a problem.
Stevens says that is not what he said at the meeting. He says minutes of that meeting are available, and he quotes from them. They record Stevens telling the PM that work on this was ongoing and that testing was under way to make sure PPE was suitable for women.
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Stevens says Boris Johnson wrong to argue lockdown might not have been needed if NHS had addressed bedblocking problem
O’Connor shows Stevens an extract from Boris Johnson’s witness statement in which Johnson seems to imply that he was forced into a lockdown because the NHS had not dealt with its capacity problem, and bedblocking (patients taking up space because adult social care provision outside hospital was not available).
In it Johnson says:
It was very frustrating to think that we were being forced to extreme measures to lock down the country and protect the NHS – because the NHS and social services had failed to grip the decades old problem of delayed discharges, commonly known as bed blocking. Before the pandemic began I was doing regular tours of hospitals and finding that about 30 per cent of patients did not strictly need to be in acute sector beds.
Stevens says Johnson was right to say there were longstanding problems with social care, that led to patients being stuck in hospital when they could be at home. But he goes on:
We and indeed he were being told that if action was not taken on reducing the spread of coronavirus, there wouldn’t be 30,000 hospital inpatients, there would be maybe 200,000 or 800,000 hospital inpatients.
So you can’t say that you would be able to deal with 200,000 or 800,000 inpatients by reference to 30,000 blocked beds.
Even if all of those 30,000 beds were freed up – for every one coronavirus patient who was then admitted to that bed, there would be another five patients who needed that care but weren’t able to get it. So no, I don’t think that is a fair statement in describing the decision calculus for the first wave.
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Stevens says Hancock thought, if NHS overwhelmed, he should decide who would live or die, not doctors
O’Connor is now asking about discussions about what might need to happen if the NHS was overwhelmed, and care had to be rationed.
In his witness statement Stevens said Matt Hancock thought that, if decisions had to be taken about who would live and who would die, that should be a ministerial matter. He said:
The secretary of state for health and social care took the position that in this situation he – rather than, say, the medical profession or the public – should ultimately decide who should live and who should die. Fortunately this horrible dilemma never crystallised.
Stevens tells the hearing:
I certainly wanted to discourage the idea that an individual secretary of state, other than in the most exceptional circumstances, should be deciding how care would be provided.
I felt that we are well served by the medical profession, in consultation with patients to the greatest extent possible, in making those kinds of decisions.
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Stevens says 'for the most part' he found Matt Hancock truthful
O’Connor says the inquiry has heard claims that Matt Hancock was dishonest. (See 10.01am.)
Q: Did you find Hancock truthful?
Stevens replies:
All I would say is strong accusations need strong evidence to back them up. And I don’t think I’ve seen that evidence.
O’Connor says he does not think Stevens is “engaging” with the question. He tries again.
Q: Was Hancock someone who you found you personally could trust?
Stevens replies: “Yes. For the most part, yes.”
Asked what he meant by that, Stevens goes on:
I’m not denying that there were a small, handful of occasions during the course of the year, year and a half, when there were tensions. But that I don’t think is particularly surprising given the circumstances under which everybody was working.
UPDATE: Ben Quinn has posted on X the extract on this from Stevens’ statement.
From the #CovidInquiry ..
— Ben Quinn (@BenQuinn75) November 2, 2023
Matt Hancock told officials that he – rather than the medical profession - “should ultimately decide who should live or die,” if the NHS was overwhelmed, the Covid-19 Inquiry has been told by the former head of NHS England, Simon Stevens pic.twitter.com/Z2W8uwEghf
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Hancock and Cummings discussed forcing Stevens to quit as NHS England chief executive in early 2020, inquiry hears
O’Connor asks Stevens if people tried to force him out of his job during Covid.
Stevens says that is not what people were saying to him at the time.
O’Connor then brings up some text exchanges between Matt Hancock, the health secretary, and Dominic Cummings, the PM’s chief adviser, in which they discussed getting rid of Stevens in January and February 2020.
Stevens says Hancock and Cummings have both said, once Covid struck, they wanted him to stay.
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O’Connor refers to paragraph 71 from Helen MacNamara’s witness statement. In it MacNamara, deputy cabinet secretary, said people in No 10 were “somewhat idealist and probably also simplistic” about the NHS. She says no one there had a detailed understanding of the NHS.
Stevens says there is truth in this.
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O’Connor presents another document that quotes Stevens saying there was a need for financial support for people who had to isolate.
Stevens says he was passing on concerns he had picked up.
Q: You thought there should be more help for people self-isolating?
That was my personal view, says Stevens.
Stevens ducks question about whether he thought Johnson dithered over Covid decisions
O’Connor says the inquiry has heard evidence of difficulties in the decision-making process, and claims the PM oscillated between those decisions. What was your view?
Stevens says he was not involved in decisions like those over lockdown.
Q: But you had frequent meetings with the PM.
Stevens says he would be there for a meeting about the NHS. But then, in further meetings, decisions were taken, taking account of what they had learnt about the NHS.
He says, because of that, he cannot give good commentary on the decision-making process.
Q: Is there really nothing you can say?
Stevens says he has seen the evidence available now, some of which was not available at the time.
He says he saw the decision-making process in relation to the roll out of the vaccine programme. For the most part, there was constructive engagement on what needed to be done.
O’Connor says that will be covered in the vaccines module (ie – at a later stage of the inquiry).
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Stevens says Cobra meetings on Covid were not 'optimally effective'
Q: What role did you play in core political decision making?
Stevens says his priority was to ensure that the NHS could look after Covid patients, and other patients it needed to see too.
He says NHS England was not directly involved in debates such as whether there was a need for lockdowns.
He says he attended some of the Cobra emergency committee meetings dealing with Covid. But he says that over time the government stopped using Cobra to deal with Covid matters.
Q: You says in your statement these meetings were not “optimally effective”. What do you mean?
Stevens says the meetings were very large, which did not help. And sometimes ministers there did not have full authority.
Q: You say when Matt Hancock was chairing them, sometimes other departments sent junior ministers.
Stevens says is not saying that was cause and effect.
Q: That is what you imply.
Stevens says he is just saying what he observed.
Q: Would more senior ministers have attended if the PM had been chairing those meetings?
Stevens says, if Boris Johnson had been chairing the meeting, other secretaries of state might have attended. But he says he is not sure that would have made a big difference to the substance of what was decided.
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At the Covid inquiry Simon Stevens is giving evidence now.
Andrew O’Connor KC, counsel for the inquiry, is questioning him.
They begin with an explanation of NHS England, and how it is not under the direct control of the Department of Health and Social Care. O’Connor says Matt Hancock was not officially Stevens’ boss. Stevens says it often felt that he had many bosses.
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Labour councillors say they're visiting Westminster today hoping to force meeting with Starmer's office
A delegation of current and recently resigned Labour councillors, including the former and acting Oxford CLP chair, are to visit Westminster this afternoon to force a meeting with Keir Starmer’s office.
The delegation will be welcomed by John McDonnell. Caroline Raine, the acting chair of the Oxford and District Labour party, is heading the delegation. Raine became chair after the former post holder, Jabu Nala-Hartley, quit the party, citing Starmer’s “refusal to condemn collective punishment of Palestinians”.
Nala-Hartley was one of the nine Oxford councillors who resigned from the party last month which led to Labour losing control of the council. Nala-Hartley is among the delegation in Westminster today, which is made up of a group of about 10 councillors and party activists.
Raine wrote to Starmer’s office yesterday. She said:
I would like to again emphasise that we have made arrangements to come to Westminster tomorrow afternoon. We expect to be seen by someone from LOTO [the leader of the opposition’s office] between 2.30 and 4pm please. We gave notice in good time and it would be very poor practice in a crisis like this for us to be sent away without being heard.
She said that the delegation includes Jews, Muslims, Christians and those of no religious faith and added “the purpose of our delegation is to stress to the leadership that we uphold a universal aspiration for human rights, due process, freedom of speech and thought, dignity and equality.”
In a statement, the delegation say they “want to put the case for an immediate ceasefire” to Starmer. They say:
We want an Israel where Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace and liberty. By agreeing that the war against Hamas can continue after a humanitarian pause, the Labour party is colluding in the endorsement of war crimes and of breaches of international law.
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Former NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens to give evidence to Covid inquiry
Simon Stevens, the former NHS England chief executive, is about to give evidence to the Covid inquiry.
The hearings on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week have all been embarrassing for Boris Johnson, but they have also been bad for the reputation of Matt Hancock, health secretary during Covid. Dominic Cummings and Helen MacNamara did not agree on much, but they both accused Hancock of misleading colleagues about what the Department of Health was actually doing about the threat posed by the virus (see here and here).
Stevens, and Sir Chris Wormald, permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, who is up later this morning, are both likely to be asked about these claims.
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Sunak says people should not be 'alarmist' about risk posed by AI - while saying it could be as dangerous as nuclear war
Rishi Sunak told reporters at the AI safety summit this morning that people should not be “alarmist” about AI – even though he also said the technology could be as dangerous as a pandemic, or nuclear war.
Asked whether a Terminator-style rise of the machines was possible, he replied:
People developing this technology themselves have raised the risk that AI may pose and it’s important to not be alarmist about this. There’s debate about this topic. People in the industry themselves don’t agree and we can’t be certain.
But there is a case to believe that it may pose a risk on a scale like pandemics and nuclear war, and that’s why, as leaders, we have a responsibility to act to take the steps to protect people, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.
Last week the government published three papers assessing the risks posed by AI.
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Labour says it would 'urgently' impose new rules on firms working on frontier AI, in challenge to Rishi Sunak
Good morning. This afternoon Rishi Sunak will be wrapping up the AI safety summit at Bletchley Park with a press conference. The summit has already produced the Bletchley declaration. But, with the government saying it will not “rush to regulate”, the event is not producing domestic UK law. Labour has spotted an opportunity and this morning it is saying that it would “urgently” impose new regulations on companies involved in so-called frontier AI (the most advanced type).
Peter Kyle, the shadow science secretary, said:
AI has the potential to transform the world and deliver life-changing benefits for working people. From delivering earlier cancer diagnosis, to relieving traffic congestion, AI can be a force for good.
But to secure these benefits we must get on top of the risks and build public trust. It is not good enough for our ‘inaction man’ prime minister to say he will not rush to take action, having told the public that there are national security risks which could end our way of life. The AI summit was an opportunity for the UK to lead the global debate on how we regulate this powerful new technology for good. Instead the prime minister has been left behind by US and EU who are moving ahead with real safeguards on the technology.
In a statement announcing its plan, Labour says:
A Labour government would urgently introduce binding regulation of those companies developing the most powerful ‘frontier’ AI . This would include requirements to:
• Report before they train models over a certain capability threshold.
• Conduct safety testing and evaluation on these models, with independent oversight
• Maintain strong information security protections, to limit the unintended spread of dangerous models
We will hear more on that this afternoon. First, this morning, the two most powerful officials in the NHS when coronavirus struck will give evidence to the Covid inquiry.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Simon Stevens, the former NHS England chief executive, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry. Later in the morning Sir Chris Wormald, permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, gives evidence.
10am: Sir Mark Rowley, Metropolitan police commissioner, and Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, are questioned by the London assembly.
Noon: Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions from MSPs.
2pm: Prof Yvonne Doyle, former medical director for Public Health England, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry.
Around 4pm: Rishi Sunak is due to chair a press conference at the end of the AI safety summit at Bletchley Park.
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