Afternoon summary
No 10 plays down hint from Jenrick that his plan to cut immigration is being blocked
In the Commons, in response to the urgent question on migration figures, Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, was asked when the government’s plan to cut immigration would be announced. He replied:
My plan would have been brought to the House before last Christmas if I could have done.
It has been reported that Jenrick has his own plan which he has presented to No 10.
Asked if Jenrick’s comment meant No 10 had blocked a plan he had proposed, a No 10 spokesperson told the afternoon lobby briefing:
I don’t know what specifically he is referring to. It’s not unusual for policy to be discussed in the normal way between departments, I’m sure this was no different.
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O’Connor asks about another statement by Harries at a press conference in March 2020. She was asked about the WHO advocating widespread testing, and she implied that was not advice that covered the UK.
Harries says her statement was misinterpreted. Many countries had not found any Covid cases, and that is why the WHO was encouraging them to test. She backed that, she says.
But, she says, the problem in the UK was that they had been testing, and that they were running out of tests.
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O’Connor is now asking Harries to defend a statement she made at a press conference in April 2020 saying the UK was an international exemplar in terms of pandemic preparedness.
Harries defends the statement, saying she was referring to a previous assessment of the UK’s position. She says when she said “regardless of the position we may be in now”, she was acknowledging that things had changed.
O’Connor says that, at a press conference in March 2020, Harries said that the problems with PPE had been sorted out. He asks her to accept this was wrong.
Harries says she was not responsible for PPE. She says, at the press conferences, she had to rely on what she had been told. She says she apologised for getting that wrong when she next attended a press conference. To apologise like that was unusual, she says.
At the Covid inquiry Prof Dame Jenny Harries, the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, is being questioned by Andrew O’Connor, counsel for the inquiry.
O’Connor puts it to Harries that, as the pandemic was taking off, she was one of the scientists who argued the case that it would be a mistake to introduce lockdown measures too early because people would get tired of complying. He says Prof Sir Chris Whitty has accepted that he was wrong in what he said about this, and he asks Harries why she has not accepted that she was at fault.
Harries is reluctant to accept that she was wrong in what she said. But eventually she said, if she “miscommunicated”, that would be an opportunity to learn.
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Gove rejects suggestion that disabled people not prioritised for support during pandemic
Before he finished giving evidence, Michael Gove was questioned by Danny Friedman KC, counsel for four organisations representing disabled people.
Friedman asked Gove about a government document saying the Covid-O committee had agreed on 29 October 2020 to work on measures to protect people who were disproportionately at risk because of their ethnicity. The minute also says Boris Johnson had asked officials to prepare “in slower time” a more ambitious package to protect people with disabilities.
Friedman asked Gove to explain why disabled people were deemed a lower priority.
Gove said he thought the phrase “in slower time” referred to the fact that preparing those measures was going to take more time. He said this does not mean the disabled were a lower priority. People involved in the decision making did not feel like that, he said.
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David Cameron is in Brussels for his first big meeting in the city since losing his premiership over Brexit in 2016.
The new foreign secretary was in the EU capital for a summit of Nato foreign ministers but snuck into the HQ after most of the cameras and British press had disappeared. However, he did join other foreign ministers for the traditional “family photo”.
He will be in Brussels for a second day of the Nato meeting tomorrow.
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Lady Hallett says she does not have 'settled views' on what Covid inquiry will conclude yet
Michael Gove has now finished his evidence. Just before he left, Lady Hallett, the inquiry chair, said she wanted to respond to something Gove said earlier and she said he was wrong to suggest the line of questioning from Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel to the inquiry, gave some indication as to what her conclusions would be. She said:
I don’t have any settled views as yet … I will not reach any conclusion until I have considered all the evidence.
She said she would be considering all the evidence, and that what came out in the oral hearings was only part of that. She would not just be focusing on WhatsApp messages, she said.
She said counsel was not putting forward personal views. If questions implied a personal view, that was only because they were designed to “test the evidence robustly”, she said.
And she said that, even if counsel had a view, that would not be relevant because the inquiry’s conclusions would reflect what she decided.
Gove welcomed the clarification.
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UK ministers made 'little attempt' to explain whether Covid measures were UK-wide or England-only, inquiry hears
Mitchell also showed the inquiry an extract from an expert analysis submitted to the inquiry, compiled by Ailsa Henderson, assessing the speeches given by UK ministers in 2020. She says there was “little attempt” to explain when rules applied across the whole of the UK and when they were England-only.
Gove does not accept this was a significant problem. He claims people had a “pretty clear understanding” of the different responsibilities of the different governments. And he says if the complaint just consists of “someone mixing up the phrase English and British” at certain points, that does not really prove that the UK government was being high-handed.
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Gove defends Cabinet Office wanting to use Covid messaging to highlight benefits of UK union
At the inquiry Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary and former Cabinet Office minister, is being questioned by Claire Mitchell KC on behalf of Scottish Covid Bereaved.
Mitchell says Gove accused the SNP government earlier of trying to exploit Covid at certain points for party political purposes. But she brings up a document written by Gove’s team in the Cabinet Office which talks about highlighting the benefits of the union. She suggests this shows it was the UK government that was trying to politicise the crisis.
Gove rejects this. He says he just wanted to stress the facts. He says it was a fact that furlough was generous, a fact that the devolved administrations got extra money via the Barnett formula and a fact that the vaccine rollout was more effective because it was UK-wide.
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Dominic Cummings joked about trip to countryside before Barnard Castle visit
Dominic Cummings joked in a private message about taking his family to the countryside in March 2020, about a fortnight before he infamously did just that in apparent breach of lockdown laws, Peter Walker reports. The message was presented at the inquiry earlier (see 12pm), but this particular message was not singled out for comment. Here is Peter’s story.
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Back at the Covid inquiry, Michael Gove is now being questioned by Kirsten Heaven, counsel for Covid Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru.
Heaven asks about a comment from Boris Johnson in his witness statement where Johnson said it was “optically wrong” for the PM to be meeting the first ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as if they were equals.
Gove says Johnson was not just arguing that it was optically wrong. He says Johnson had a more fundamental objection to decisions being taken like that.
Jenrick confirms government considering caps as part of 'package of fundamental reforms' to bring down immigration
Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, told MPs earlier that the government would bring in “a serious package of fundamental reforms” to bring down immigration. He made the comment as he responded to an urgent question tabled by Labour about last week’s migration figures.
During the UQ, in which Jenrick faced fierce criticism from some Tory MPs over the level of net migration, the minister said:
We believe that the number of people coming into this country is too high, that it is placing unbearable pressure on our public services and on housing, that it is making it impossible to integrate people into this country and is harming community cohesion and national unity.
It is also a moral failure because it’s leaving people on welfare and enabling companies to reach all too often for the easy lever of foreign labour.
For all those reasons, we are determined to tackle this issue. We understand the concerns of the British public and I’m here to say that we share them, and that we are going to bring forward a serious package of fundamental reforms to address this issue once and for all.
Asked if the government would a cap on overall migration numbers, Jenrick replied:
There are definitely strong arguments for using caps, whether in general or on specific visas, but these are conversations that we need to conclude within government.
And asked if the government intended to restrict the ability of people with visas to bring dependants with them, Jenrick confirmed this was being considered. He said:
It’s certainly true that there has been a very, very substantial number of dependants coming into the UK alongside visa holders, whether that be students, care workers or skilled workers, and it is a choice for the country as to whether we want to continue to pursue that.
There is a strong argument for saying that it is unsustainable for the country to continue to take so many dependants who, in turn, put pressure on housing, public services, school places and so on.
And there are different models on which we could base our visa system which did not enable so many dependants to come into the country.
Jenrick said this was a particular issue for people coming to the UK with care worker visas. They were bringing dependants with them “almost one-for-one”, he said.
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Keith says on 2 January 2021 Gove sent a private note to Boris Johnson saying he should adopt a position of maximum suppression.
Q: Why did you feel the need to write to Johnson like this?
Gove says he wanted to make sure that he could put his views to Johnson direct, and without any interference.
Q: You were chair of Covid-O (the committee dealing with Covid operational matters). You were a member of the Quad (the four ministers most in charge of this: Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Matt Hancock and Gove). Why did you need to do this?
Gove says he wanted to use all means possible to get his views across. He says Keith criticised him earlier for not putting his views more robustly. (See 12.33pm.)
Q: You wanted the last word.
Yes, says Gove.
Q: Why, on 20 March 2020, when the same debate was taking place, didn’t you do the same thing. Instead on 20 March you took the consensus approach.
Gove says he could have been more “vehement” in March. But he was forceful at the time too, he says. Other people would agree, he says.
Keith has now finished his questions. The inquiry is taking a short break, and it will be back at 3pm, when counsel for core participants will question Gove.
Keith says in October it was argued that an early lockdown might cause less economic damage than a late one. In March that argument was not made, he says.
Gove accepts that.
But he says, as someone arguing for the second lockdown, he had to make the case with vigour.
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Keith says the Patrick Vallance diary entries show that Gove was very sceptical about the tier system. But he says the diary entries do not show Gove arguing for a second lockdown in the weeks before it was ordered in the autumn of 2020.
Gove says anyone who heard his criticism of the tier system then in place would have realised he wanted something stronger.
Keith is now in a stand-off with Gove. He is trying to get Gove to give a short answer to a question about why departments failed to respond adequately to a request he made. Gove says it is impossible to answer briefly, because he has to explain the political context. Keith tries again to get him to respond succinctly, but Gove claims he can either answer accurately, or briefly, but not both. Keith suggests that is one of the more unusual in terrorem threats he’s heard in his time. Gove says it’s a promise, not a threat.
There has been quite a lot of this all day. Gove has been one of the more combative witnesses to appear recently – with his politeness failing to conceal his passive aggression.
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Gove suggests Westminster did not consult with Scottish government at some points because SNP exploited grievances
Back at the inquiry, Michael Gove admits the decision to change the UK government’s official advice from “stay at home” to “stay alert” was not communicated to the Scottish government first.
Asked why that was, Gove says the UK government discussed many things with the Scottish government.
But he goes on to say that the Scottish government was led by a party (the SNP) that sometimes has a desire to exploit grievances against the Westminster government. The SNP is also tempted “to exaggerate the impact of a mistake or an error in order to feed a broader political mission”.
Hugo Keith KC, counsel for the inquiry, says the heads of the devolved governments, in their witness statements to the inquiry, have denied acting from “venal political motives” during Covid.
Gove says in Wales and Northern Ireland the first minister was from a unionist party. But the SNP is different, he says, because it wants to leave the UK.
Greek officials who travelled with Kyriakos Mitsotakis to London have vigorously denied any suggestion that a pledge had been made to eschew the contentious cultural issue of the Parthenon marbles during Tuesday’s aborted meeting with Rishi Sunak.
“We have many topics to discuss,” said Tassos Hatzivasileou, a New Democracy MP, clarifying that the Parthenon sculptures were one of many topics the Greek contingent had planned to raise in talks with the British prime minister. He went on:
The agenda was not a single-issue one, nor is it going to be. But unfortunately what are the British doing? They, alone, are politicising the whole affair.
Hatzivasileou, who advises the Greek leader on international affairs and was part of the visiting team, downplayed the role of the UK government in ongoing negotiations over the antiquities, saying Athens’ counterpart in the discussions was the British Museum, home of the “exiled” artworks for the past two centuries, not Downing Street. He said:
Sunak’s choice to cancel the meeting essentially politicises the whole process which only indirectly concerns the British government.
The prime minister [Mitsotakis] did not say anything new [in his Sunday interview with the BBC]. He repeated, yet again, and very clearly, well-known Greek views regarding reunification of the Parthenon sculptures.
It was evident, he said, that Sunak was acting under pressure from public opinion polls ahead of general elections in the UK next year.
2024 is a year of elections in the UK and the pressure of polls showing the Labour party ahead with 20 percentage points obviously pushed the British side into making this diplomatic foul ... but it is a pity because our relations with the British are far-reaching. We have a strong friendship with a strategic base.
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Keith told the inquiry that there was a specific WhatsApp group set up to discuss the hunting and shooting issues. As well as Gove, its members included Simon Hart (now chief whip, Welsh secretary at the time, and a former chief executive of the Countryside Alliance), Mark Spencer (chief whip at the time, and a farmer), Nigel Adams (a Foreign Office minister at the time, and a close ally of Boris Johnson’s) and Alistair Jack (Scottish secretary then and now).
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Gove denies claim WhatsApp exchanges show decision to exempt hunting and shooting from Covid rules was covered up
Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary and former Cabinet Office minister, is back at the Covid inquiry.
Hugo Keith KC, counsel for the inquiry, asks about a decision taken in the autumn of 2020 to exempt hunting and shooting from Covid restrictions. He shows WhatsApp exchanges referring to them.
In a message on 12 September 2020, an official (not named) puts it to Gove that he assumes Gove is “strongly in favour of exempting [hunting and shooting] but in a way that doesn’t appear on face of regs [regulations]”. Gove replies: “Yes.”
Asked about the exchanges, Gove rejects suggestions that he was trying to conceal the fact that he was making an exemption for the two sports (which are popular with some Tory supporters). Gove claimed he was just trying to ensure that the rules were applied in a consistent manner.
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Greek minister says Sunak's snub to his PM 'bad day' for relations between two countries
A Greek minister has said that Rishi Sunak’s decision to snub Kyriakos Mitsotakis was “a bad day” for relations between the two countries.
In an interview with Radio 4’s World at One, Adonis Georgiadis, the Greek development minister, said:
It was a bad day. I think your prime minister, when he will have a second thought, he will understand that the Greek prime minister is an important person.
The Greek people have re-elected him and put their trust in him.
I have to be very honest — what Kyriakos Mitsotakis mentioned in his interview is not just his own opinion.
It is the single one opinion of 11 million Greek people and I think many more million people around the world.
No 10 says Sunak cancelled meeting with Greek PM because 'assurances' about Parthenon marbles debate were not kept
Downing Street has defended Rishi Sunak’s decision to cancel a meeting with his Greek counterpart, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, after Mitsotakis made the case for the Parthenon marbles to be returned to Athens on the BBC on Sunday.
Asked to explain Sunak’s decision, the PM’s spokesperson told journalists at the lobby briefing this morning:
The UK and Greece relationship is hugely important, from our work together in Nato, to tackling shared challenges like illegal migration and joint efforts to resolve the crisis in the Middle East and the war in Ukraine.
When requesting a meeting with the prime minister this week, the Greek government provided reassurances that they would not use the visit as a public platform to relitigate long-settled matters relating to the ownership of the Parthenon sculptures, which would only serve to distract from those important issues I just outlined.
Given those assurances were not adhered to, the prime minister felt it would not be productive to hold a meeting dominated by that issue, rather than the important challenges facing Greek and British people.
The deputy prime minister was available to meet the Greek prime minister to discuss the wider topics and we are disappointed the prime minister opted not to take this meeting.
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The Covid inquiry has stopped for lunch. It will be back at 1.35pm. Lady Hallett, the chair, says the lunch break is a bit shorter than usual today because they have so much evidence to get through.
Back at the Covid inquiry, Hugo Keith KC, counsel for the inquiry, asks Michael Gove if he agrees with Helen MacNamara, the deputy cabinet secretary, that having the Covid-S and Covid-O committees dealing with Covid meant that too few people were involved in the key decisions.
Gove says he does not accept that. He says the full cabinet is too unwieldy to take proper decisions.
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Keegan accused of showing 'contempt for teachers' after she unveils plans for school minimum service levels during strikes
Teaching unions have reacted with anger after the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, announced plans to introduce minimum service levels (MSLs) in schools to protect children in the case of strike action.
She launched a consultation on the new proposals today after talks with unions to draw up a voluntary agreement collapsed. It includes plans to prioritise attendance for vulnerable children, exam groups, children of critical workers and primary school pupils, as well as the use of rotas for strikes lasting five days or more.
Keegan said:
Keeping children in school is my number one priority. Last year’s school strikes were some of the most disruptive on record for children and parents with 25 million cumulative days lost, alongside the strike action that badly affected students in colleges and universities.
We cannot afford a repeat of that disruption - particularly as young people continue to catch up from the pandemic. Whilst I know many schools and colleges worked really hard to keep children and young people in face-to-face education during strikes, we must make sure that approach is applied in every school, in every area of country.
Unions were unanimous in their opposition. Patrick Roach, the general secretary of the NASUWT teachers union, accused the government of trying to bully teachers into silence. He said:
The government is once again demonstrating its contempt for teachers, at a time when they should be listening to the concerns of the profession and facing up to the crisis in recruitment and retention they have created.
Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union, added:
This is a fundamental attack on the democratic freedoms and rights of school staff. It also demonstrates the government’s incredible lack of understanding that schools already ensure is in place for students on strike days.
And Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said:
Minimum service levels are a profoundly illiberal policy by a government that has lost the argument. Nobody wants to go on strike. It is action that is taken as a last resort when all else has failed. But passing a law which effectively removes the right to strike from groups of employees is obviously done in order to weaken unions and the voice of employees over their pay and conditions.
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Gove says he should have pushed more firmly for full lockdown in week before it was announced
Q: Why did you not call for lockdown in the Cobra meetings you attended in the week starting 16 March?
Gove says he believes he had communicated his views. Sometimes as a minister, when chairing a meeting, you have to act as a neutral chair. He says he was asked by a PM to chair a Cobra meeting then, and he felt he ought to be neutral.
Q: Do you regret not being more forthright?
Gove says normally people are not happy when he is forthright. But he accepts on this occasion he should have been.
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Gove says he also read articles about the case against lockdown.
But he says the Swedish approach to Covid was more similar to the UK’s than some people claimed, because people there voluntarily restricted their social contacts even though legal restrictions were not in force as they were in the UK.
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Gove says he would have backed full lockdown on 16 March 2020
Keith says the decision to order people to stay at home on 16 March 2020 had a considerable impact on people’s behaviour.
Q: Why did you not wait until there was a bit more data before going ahead with the full lockdown?
Because the virus was spreading exponentially, Gove says.
Keith says ministers knew the virus was spreading exponentially earlier in March.
Gove says he personally was pressing for the most vigorous action earlier.
Q: Would you have backed a lockdown on 16 or 20 March?
Yes, says Gove.
He says this article, by Tomas Pueyo, had a decisive impact on this thinking.
Gove rejects claims Johnson dithered unreasonably over introducing first lockdown
Keith puts it to Gove that Johnson was not just someone who liked testing both sides of an argument before taking a decision. He puts it to Gove that Johnson was someone reluctant to take a decision, or unwilling to stick to a decision he had taken.
Gove says he does not accept that, at least in this case.
He says Johnson was entitled to test the arguments. Johnson ended up taking the right decision, he says. But he accepts it may have taken Johnson “a little longer, to come to that conclusion than others”.
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Gove defends Johnson's approach to taking decisions, saying he liked to fully consider both sides of argument
Q: Dominic Cummings says, in the week starting Monday 16 March (the day Boris Johnson told people to stay at home), the PM was oscillating as to whether further measures were required.
Gove says this was difficult. He claims Johnson did not find taking decisions difficult. But he says he was a liberal, and found the idea of restricting free association deeply difficult. It was opposed to his world view.
To contemplate such a big measure was a decision of huge weight, he says.
Gove says his personal view was that such a decision was inevitable.
But he says Johnson would instinctively have felt unhappy with all these decisions, including closing schools.
As for Johnson’s oscillating style, he says Johnson liked to hear the thesis and then the antithesis before taking a decision. He goes on:
He preferred gladiatorial decision-making rather than inquisitorial. He wanted to see the two cases or the three cases rehearsed in front of him, or even rehearsed in his own mind.
Any prime minister is entitled to test propositions and to think ‘is the restriction of liberty and the economic damage consequent upon lockdown worth inflicting on people in order to prevent the spread of this virus’?
Gove says some people found this approach difficult.
But he says he was used to Johnson being like this. He says all leaders have their own ways of taking decisions.
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'We are fucking up as a government' - how Gove warned privately on 4 March that Cabinet Office failing
Keith shows Gove an extract from an exchange of messages between Gove and Dominic Cummings. On 4 March 2020 Gove told Cummings that the government was “fucking up” and that the situation was worse than he thought.
Gove said:
You know me, I don’t often kick off but we’re fucking up as a government and missing golden opportunities. I will carry on doing what I can but the whole situation is even worse than you think and action needs to be taken or we will regret it for a long time.
Gove says he was concerned about the ability of the government to deliver.
Covid was on my mind, but it wasn’t the principal thing that I was messaging about. It was about the Cabinet Office overall, including its ability to deal with Covid.
He apologises for his language.
This set of exchanges, shown to the inquiry, also shows Cummings saying to Gove in a message on 11 March 2020 that “people should be shot” because government handling of the crisis was so bad.
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Keith asks why the government did not realise in early March that it needed to stop the spread of Covid.
Gove says ministers accepted the view of Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, that there was a limit to what could be done.
Lockdown measures were unprecedented. And the argument was that, if they were introduced too early, they would have to be lifted because people would not put up with them for too long.
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Gove lists what he sees as government's main Covid mistakes, including handling of PPE procurement
The Covid inquiry has resumed.
Hugo Keith KC, counsel for the inquiry, starts by saying, when Michel Gove told the inquiry earlier that the goverment made mistakes during Covid, he did not ask Gove to say what those errors were. He invites Gove to do so now.
Gove says:
I believe that we were too slow to lockdown initially in March (2020).
I believe we should have taken stricter measures before we eventually decided to do so in late October.
I believe that while it was admirable that we succeeded in building testing capacity so quickly, that the strategic approach to who should be tested, why and what our tests were for was not as rigorously thought through as it might have been.
I am also concerned that we did not pay enough attention to the impact on children, vulnerable children, of some of the measures that we took.
And he says the government’s approach to PPE procurement “deserves at the very least reflection”.
Gove has a particular interest in this last issue because he has been interviewed by the National Crime Agency – as a witness, not as a suspect – in connection with the allegations about the Tory peer Michelle Mone and PPE procurement.
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Sunak has record of sometimes being rude to other foreign leaders, former minister Zac Goldsmith claims
Zac Goldsmith, who resigned as a Foreign Office minister in protest over Rishi Sunak’s lack of support on environmental issues, has accused the PM of embarrassing Britain on the world stage by cancelling his meeting with his Greek counterpart.
This wasn’t the first time Sunak has snubbed a world leader, Goldsmith claimed.
In a post on X, he said:
Cancelling meetings at the last minute with leaders of allied countries is not only petulant and embarrassing, it reflects so badly on our country.
]The Greek PM was literally just restating longstanding Greek policy. It should be possible to agree or disagree without insulting him and his country.
As a Foreign Office minister I was often baffled by Sunak’s clumsiness and sometimes rudeness
Cancelling meetings at the last minute with leaders of allied countries is not only petulant and embarrassing, it reflects so badly on our country.
— Zac Goldsmith (@ZacGoldsmith) November 28, 2023
The Greek PM was literally just restating longstanding Greek policy. It should be possible to agree or disagree without insulting…
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Greek government hits back at No 10 over Sunak's snub, saying he's 'annoyed' because he's losing argument over marbles
This morning the Greek government’s spokesperson described Rishi Suank’s snub of Kyriakos Mitsotakis as “unprecedented”, with senior officials saying Sunak’s cancellation of the scheduled meeting was tantamount to an own goal.
“We’re talking about a British foul,” said Dimitris Tsiodras who heads the prime ministerial press office. He told Mega TV:
Greece is a proud country, with a long history. Mitsotakis represents this country, this people. You can’t just say: ‘Look, the meeting isn’t going to happen. See the deputy PM’.
There was no question that Mitsotakis, who has made the marbles repatriation a government priority, would not raise the issue during his visit to London, Tsiodras said. He went on:
The prime minister raises the issue of the marbles’ return at every opportunity, he has raised it in the past, and he raised it on Sunday … it is a well-known Greek position which he has expressed with great clarity … we were clear that the issue of the sculptures would be raised [in talks with Sunak].
In the wake of what Athens has called unseemly behaviour on the part of Sunak, Tsiodras said it was clear the country’s renewed campaign to win back the sculptures had gained momentum and was paying off. He explained:
British public opinion has begun to firmly change [in favour of their return to Athens from the British Museum]. Obviously this has annoyed Sunak because when you have a difference of opinion it doesn’t mean you don’t go ahead with a meeting. You have the meeting and exchange opposing views.
Meanwhile the Greek government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis told Skai TV that while Athens’ centre-right administration did not want to further inflame the issue, Sunak’s snub would not be forgotten. He said:
It is without precedent that a meeting doesn’t happen because of a difference [in opinion].
We don’t want to give the issue further credence … negotiation around the Parthenon marbles is not happening between Greece and the British state but with the British Museum and as such we don’t want it to be seen as a general crisis [in bilateral ties] but … as the negative behaviour of an individual, the British prime minister, about which we have expressed our displeasure.
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Keith quotes evidence showing that, in late February, Boris Johnson thought the biggest danger was over-reacting to Covid.
Gove says by early March he thought the biggest danger was under-reacting.
But Johnson was worried about paralysing the economy, he says. He says he wanted to be “absolutely certain it was justified” before taking such a step.
Gove says at the end of February he could give “considerable weight” to what Gove was thinking.
He goes on:
It was only in the succeeding days that I became more and more convinced actually that action was required. And that was partly because of what I had seen happening in Italy, partly also material that had been sent to me by friends outside government that led me to believe action was needed.
The hearing has now stopped for a break until 11.30am.
Gove says it is hard to find people who were arguing for lockdown measures before early March 2020
Keith asks Gove about the plan for Covid in early 2020.
Q: Was it just contain and delay?
Partly, says Gove. But he says the fact that the chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, was a leading epidemiologist was an important help too. And the NHS had stocks of some drugs that might be useful, and PPE.
Q: What debate was there about the need for infection control measures in early February?
Gove says there was a debate about what was happening in Asian countries, including China.
For the UK, lockdown was “an unprecedented departure”, he says.
Normally those infected would be isolated – not the whole population.
He says the government was looking at the emerging evidence.
In early March, the advice was that a lockdown-type policy would have to be introduced with care because the population would not put up with it for long.
Q: So do you accept that, as you debated the possibility of the virus spreading, there was no discussion of infection control? So how were you going to stop the virus spreading?
Gove says he is sure that debate was going on in Sage. He could only rely on the advice given to ministers, and what he read in open source publications. At the time there were not many voices calling for a lockdown. It was only when Italy tried that approach that thinking changed.
He says he searched “in vain” for people well in advance of early March were clear about what was needed.
He says Rory Stewart, the former Tory cabinet minister, was one of the most prescient figures.
Gove tells inquiry 'significant body of judgment' thinks Covid virus was man-made
Q: Was trust in the UK’s ability to cope with a pandemic misplaced?
Gove says the UK was not as well placed as it might have been.
He says the virus was novel.
And he says there is “a significant body of judgment that believes that the virus itself was man-made”.
He is referring to the claim that it was manufactured in a Chinese government laboratory. He is suggesting that this might have been something that made the virus particularly hard to deal with.
But it is quite a tangent he has gone down, and it may go further than what ministers have said before about the credibility of the China “laboratory escape” thesis.
Keith quickly closes down this line of argument, saying that “divisive issue” does not fall within the terms of reference of the inquiry.
UPDATE: After Keith said this issue was ouside the scope of the inquiry, Gove said:
I think it is important to recognise that the virus presented a series of new challenges that required both the science to adjust and science , by definition, adjusts on the basis of accumulating evidence – both about the operation of the virus and its effect on particular elements within the population.
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Keith suggests, if DHSC was struggling to cope, it should have asked for help earlier.
Gove says it was not just the DHSC that had data about the crisis. Others in government should have been in a position to assess the problem, he suggests.
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Gove defends Hancock, but says health department was trying to do too much at start of crisis
Keith is now asking about Matt Hancock and the Department of Health and Social Care.
Q: We have heard evidence that between February and May 2020 the DHSC was overwhelmed by the crisis. Do you agree?
Gove says he would put it differently.
He says he has a very high opinion of Sir Chris Wormald, the permanent secretary at DHSC. They worked together at education, he says.
And he says he also has a high opinion of Hancock.
But “too much was asked of DHSC at that point”, he says.
He says they should have realised collectively that this was a “whole-system crisis”.
He says DHSC thought they could handle the crisis. While that spirit was admirable, it would have been better to broaden responsibility earlier, he says.
UPDATE: Gove said:
I have a high opinion of Matt Hancock as a minister.
However, I believe that too much was asked of DHSC (Department of Health and Social Care) at that point.
We should collectively have recognised that this was a health system crisis at an earlier point and taken on to other parts of government the responsibility for delivery that was being asked of DHSC at the time.
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Gove tells inquiry he does not accept Dominic Cummings' aggressive style made No 10 dysfunctional
Keith asks about the comments from Simon Case in WhatsApp exchanges saying he had never seen such a team ill-suited to running the country.
Gove says all Downing Street teams involve people who clash.
Under Boris Johnson there were strong personalities in No 10, he says.
But those strong personalities had not just delivered an election victory; they had broken the logjam over Brexit.
Q: But do you accept those strong personalities had an impact on how No 10 performed.
Gove says you will never get a team “in perfect harmony”. It is in the nature of politics to have strong views.
The question is, does the system tolerate a diversity of views? And does it deliver when a decision has been taken.
(These questions are mostly about Dominic Cummings. Cummings used to work as an adviser for Gove when Gove was education secretary, and for a long time they were close friends.)
Gove says he shares some of Cummings’ concerns about the weaknesses in the way government operates. But he goes on:
But I think that it’s in the nature of anyone who’s a reformer that they will feel the need to test the effectiveness of delivery, and then want to seek to improve it.
He says the Johnson government delivered Brexit well, and delivered the vaccine rollout well.
But in other areas “it would be wrong to award ourselves high marks”, he says.
UPDATE: Gove said:
It is certainly the case that under Boris Johnson there were strong personalities in No 10.
You’re never going to get a perfect team of personalities, all of whom are beautifully aligned and amongst whom there is perfect harmony.
You will always have – it’s in the nature of politics – strong views, sometimes punchily expressed.
The nature of decision-making in any organisation under pressure means that people do sometimes need to be a little bit direct.
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As an example of how dysfunctional the Cabinet Office was, Michael Gove recalls being asked to make a Commons statement about the departure of the permanent secretary at the Home Office, Philip Rutnam, after a row with Priti Patel, the home secretary. He says that he was only told just before he went into the Commons that Patel was being investigated over an alleged breach of the ministerial code in relation to this. The Cabinet Office’s propriety and ethics team were involved in this, he says. But he says he had not been told.
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Gove delivers apology to Covid victims and their families for 'mistakes made by government'
Gove breaks away from the line of questioning to issue an apology.
I want to take this opportunity, if I may, to apologise to the victims who endured so much pain, the families who’ve endured so much loss, as a result of the mistakes that were made by government in response to the pandemic.
And as a minister, responsible for the Cabinet Office, and who was also close to many of the decisions that were made, I must take my share of responsibility for that.
Politicians are human beings, we’re fallible, we make mistakes and we make errors. And I’m sure that the inquiry will have an opportunity to look in detail at many of the errors I and others made.
But he also says he and his colleagues were trying to take the best decisions “in circumstances where every decision was difficult and every course was bad”.
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Gove says Cabinet Office had flawed structure even before Covid started
Keith says the inquiry has heard from several witnesses who have described the Cabinet Office as dysfunctional during Covid.
Q: How did that happen?
Gove says the structure of the Cabinet Office was flawed. Normally a cabinet minister is responsible for what their department does. But that is not the case at the Cabinet Office, he says. Significant parts answer either to the cabinet secretary or to the PM, and not to the lead departmental minister, he says.
Q: So to whom should the inquiry look for accountability as to the state the Cabinet Office was in?
Gove says for many years the Cabinet Office has operated in a way which is “not as effective as it should be”, both in relation to delivering normal government services and and to responding to emergencies.
He says the Cabinet Office ceded too much responsibility to lead government departments, and did not take enough responsibility at the centre.
He also says past prime ministers have given the Cabinet Office responsibility for things that did not fit elsewhere, like drugs policy. He says it became a “Mary Poppins bag” into which PMs will shove things that need to be dealt with by the government’s nanny.
He says, when he became responsible for the Cabinet Office in early 2020, he called for changes to the way it operated.
He says he is not blaming the civil servants, some of whom were among the best. The problem was that it had been given too much to do, and that there was no strategic thinking about how the centre of government should be reconfigured.
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Michael Gove gives evidence to Covid inquiry
Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary and former Cabinet Office minister, has just started giving evidence to the Covid inquiry.
He is being questioned by Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel for the inquiry.
The feed is here:
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The FT’s George Parker says some Tories think Rishi Sunak cancelled his meeting with Kyriakos Mitsotakis because Mitsotakis met Keir Starmer first.
There’s another slant. A senior Tory tells me Sunak is probably “pissed off” because Mitsotakis met Starmer before him (like Obama meeting Cameron in 2009 to PM Gordon Brown’s fury)
— George Parker (@GeorgeWParker) November 27, 2023
Alex Norris, the shadow policing minsiter, told Sky News this mornng, that, if this was the reason for Sunak’s snub, that was extraordinary. he said:
I thought the logic that we heard overnight that the prime minister didn’t want to discuss that topic, I thought that was pretty thin.
If it’s about that, then I’d be very surprised indeed.
Ultimately, Greece is a huge, important strategic ally of ours on the issue of migration, which of course Rishi Sunak talks about every day. Similarly on the economy, cultural issues, with lots of Greek people who live in this country and vice versa.
So, of course he should be meeting with the prime minister when he’s in this country. I’m very, very surprised that he hasn’t.
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Here is Stephen Bush from the FT on the Parthenon marbles row.
This whole argument is daft. No, it is not a gift to Labour that Rishi Sunak cancelled a meeting with the Greek PM. No, Labour has not fallen into a trap by criticising him either. Political debates by and for people who aren’t hit by rising interest rates or NHS waiting times.
This whole argument is daft. No, it is not a gift to Labour that Rishi Sunak cancelled a meeting with the Greek PM. No, Labour has not fallen into a trap by criticising him either. Political debates by and for people who aren't hit by rising interest rates or NHS waiting times. https://t.co/K4rEOodJKO
— Stephen Bush (@stephenkb) November 27, 2023
According to a report by Steven Swinford and Matt Dathan in the Times, Rishi Sunak has been told that, if he includes an option to disregard the European convention on human rights in the new legislation intended to ensure deportations to Rwanda can go ahead, that will be counterproductive – because it will delay the point at which flights might start. Swinford and Dathan say:
The prime minister held talks on Saturday with James Cleverly, the home secretary; Alex Chalk, the justice secretary; and Victoria Prentis, the attorney general, about the plans for emergency legislation.
Sunak is considering hardline plans to include a “notwithstanding” clause in the legislation to direct British courts to ignore the European convention on human rights (ECHR). However, legal advice drawn up for the meeting warned that this approach risked backfiring because it could lead to further challenges on the basis that Britain is breaching its ECHR obligations …
Three senior government sources told the Times that No 10 is backtracking on opting out of the ECHR. One said: “Everyone wants whatever is going to work and that doesn’t seem to be the full-fat version. We’d be picking a fight when it’s not actually practically useful and we really just want what’s going to get planes off the ground the quickest.”
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Greek leader declines meeting with UK deputy PM after Sunak’s snub
Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Greek PM, declined a meeting with the UK deputy prime minster, Oliver Dowden, after it was offered in place of one with Rishi Sunak, Ben Quinn reports.
Here is some more polling on the Parthenon marbles from two years ago.
Everyone is losing their marbles. This is not a clever wedge issue. pic.twitter.com/OVVfoJlXqt
— Will Jennings (@drjennings) November 27, 2023
Rishi Sunak cancels meeting with Greek PM amid Parthenon marbles row
Good morning. Rishi Sunak does not have all the qualities of a great human being but, among other virtues, he is generally calm and polite, and that makes his row with the Greek PM about the Parthenon marbles even harder to comprehend than it otherwise would be.
The official explanation is that Sunak cancelled his meeting with Kyriakos Mitsotakis because Mitsotakis went back on a promise not to raise the issue of the sculptures during his three-day visit to the UK. But did anyone in No 10 seriously think that Mitsotakis would be able to get through media interviews without being asked about the subject?
And so if the pretext for cancelling the meeting was flaky, was this all just some political ruse to present Sunak in a positive light ahead of the election. (One of the problems with political commentary at this stage of the political cycle is that it is assumed that everything is motivated by calculations about electoral positioning. Roughly 80% of the time that’s true, but sometimes it isn’t.)
Some of the briefing from the Tory side backs up this analysis. Keir Starmer met Mitsotakis yesterday and Labour is not opposed to the marbles going back to Greece on loan, and in her London Playbook briefing Rosa Prince quotes a Conservative source as saying:
Starmer sold out to secure a meeting. It’s naive on his part and shows how little regard he has for British taxpayers who have looked after these for generations. Starmer is up to his old tricks of just telling the person in front of him what they want to hear.
Given that polling suggests two-thirds of Britons would support the sculptures going back to Greece as part of a deal that would see Greek artefacts being loaned to British museums in exchange, it is hard to see Sunak’s move as a great vote-winner. But James Johnson, a pollster who used to work in No 10 for Theresa May, says it is not obviously a mistake. He posted this on X last night.
oh incredibly niche. i don't think it moves the dial at all. but i don't think it's a political error. PM needs as many opportunities as possible to try and look strong/patriotic vis-a-vis Starmer
— James Johnson (@jamesjohnson252) November 27, 2023
Perhaps the worst take on this whole affair came this morning from Mark Harper, the transport secretary. In an interview on Sky News this morning, he claimed that Sunak’s decision to cancel the meeting was not a snub. Asked if it was a snub, he replied:
The prime minister wasn’t able to meet the Greek prime minister. He was offered a meeting with the deputy prime minister, which proved not to be possible for him to take up. So, I don’t think I’d characterise it the way you have.
Discussions continue between our governments about important matters.
Here is Helena Smith’s story about the row.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.
10am: Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary and Cabinet Office minister during the pandemic, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry.
Morning: David Cameron, the new foreign secretary, attends a meeting of Nato foreign ministers in Brussels.
10.15am: Richard Hughes, chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, and colleagues give evidence to the Commons Treasury committee about the autumn statement.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
After 12.30pm: MPs debate the second reading of the criminal justice bill.
Afternoon: Prof Dame Jenny Harries, the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry.
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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