Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock will appear before the Covid-19 inquiry next week, in a major week of hearings that will also see Michael Gove and Dominic Raab give evidence.
In what will be a highly anticipated week of evidence, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham will also appear.
Sajid Javid, Mr Hancock's successor, as well as Liverpool’s Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram, will also appear to give evidence. Former deputy chief medical officer Professor Dame Jenny Harries is also scheduled to take questions from Lady Hallett’s probe.
Mr Hancock has faced repeated criticism from a number of witnesses before the inquiry, with the former health secretary down to give evidence across both Thursday and Friday.
The former Tory MP, who now sits as an independent after losing the party whip by appearing on ITV’s I’m A Celebrity… reality TV show, played a key role in the UK’s pandemic response.
Ahead of the latest session, professor Sir Chris Whitty, the UK's chief medical officer, said herd immunity was a "very dangerous" strategy for dealing with the Covid pandemic.
Addressing the inquiry on Wednesday, Sir Chris said it would have been “inconceivable” to create herd immunity through natural infection because “it would have led to extraordinarily high loss of life.”
“We had no idea whether, even in a theoretical situation, the population would by natural infection even get to the herd immunity threshold.”
He added: “People who’ve got higher risks – older citizens, people with disabilities, people with immunosuppression and so on – (would have) very significant risks of mortality, so the impact of that on mortality would be very severe.”
Sir Chris also went to say that neither he nor former chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance were told about Rishi Sunak's Eat Out to Help Out scheme before it was implemented.
