Covid inquiry – live: George Osborne claims austerity had ‘positive’ effect on UK’s ability to withstand Covid

Failing to appoint a senior minister with sole responsibility over planning for pandemics and other areas of resilience is an “error”, Oliver Letwin has said.

At the UK Covid-19 inquiry, Sir Oliver Letwin said resilience was a “relatively small part” of his brief while Cabinet Office minister in charge of the area between 2011 and 2016.

He spent a lot of time on “endless discussions” with Liberal Democrat colleagues in the coalition government in the “rather wide-ranging and unusual role”.

Sir Oliver said: “Actually there really ought to be a minister solely devoted to resilience at a senior level.”

Asked if anyone had ever had this role, he said: “There hasn’t, as far as I’m aware and I think that is an error.

“I came to that view very gradually but by the end of my time I was pretty convinced that we ought to have, and had I remained in situ I would’ve tried therefore to move to a model, where somebody took that position.”

But appointing a junior minister would “achieve nothing”, he said, and they must be senior and close to the prime minister.

Asked if the “revolving door aspect” of ministerial appointments undermines experiences, Letwin replied: “I strongly believe it does.”

Letwin said: “If you’re a minister responsible for anything for six months, you could have training for the first two months, but by the time you finish your training you’ve practically finished your job.”

He added: “It isn’t just a question of training, it’s a question of training and having a system of having ministers and officials in post long enough so they can use the training.”

Sir Oliver Letwin is giving evidence to the Covid inquiry.

Letwin was Minister for Government Policy between 2010-2016 and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster from 2014-2016.

He described the role of minister as “wide ranging and unusual,” but explained resilience was only a “small part” of the role.

He added that there hasn’t been a minister that’s sole purpose was emergency preparedness. Something he called “an error”

Letwin said: “I didn’t have enough time to do as much as I should have done.”

The government’s focus on Brexit “crowded out and prevented” the work that was needed to prepare for the next pandemic, the lead lawyer to the Covid-19 inquiry has said.

Hugo Keith KC told the inquiry that work arising from the threat of a no-deal exit from the EU under Boris Johnson may have drained “the resources and capacity” that were needed for pandemic planning.

The top lawyer told the chair of the inquiry, Baroness Hallett, that a lot of planning had gone into the “severe consequences of a no-deal exit on food and medicine supplies, travel and transport”.

Adam Forrest reports:

The Cabinet Office’s refusal to hand over requested documents to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry is “corrosive” and will damage confidence in the process, the opening hearing has been told.

Sam Jacobs, a lawyer representing the Trades Union Congress (TUC), said the department’s position “smacks of having something to hide”.

He warned the “infighting” between Boris Johnson and the Government “jars with the terrible losses” suffered during the pandemic.

Nina Lloyd reports:

David Cameron was heckled as he left the Covid Inquiry on Monday, 19 June, after giving evidence.

Shouts of “shame on you” were heard as the former prime minister made his way out of the hearing in London.

The former Conservative leader told the inquiry it was a “mistake” for his government to focus too heavily on preparations for combating a wave of flu rather than a coronavirus-like pandemic.

Mr Cameron his government’s austerity cuts which have been blamed for leaving the NHS in a “parlous state” before the pandemic hit.

BMA council chairman Professor Philip Banfield said ahead of Monday’s hearing there was “no doubt that both staff and patients were put in harm’s way” because of underfunding in the decade running up to Covid’s arrival.

In a blog written for the union’s website, he writes: “I have seen first-hand the damage wrought by years of austerity and a failure to prioritise the nation’s health. The UK was severely on the back foot when Covid took hold, and this proved disastrous - for the doctors I represent and the millions who suffered at the hands of the virus.

“It is therefore critical that Cameron, Osborne and Hunt are taken to task over the decisions they made that left us so unprepared, and to ensure the same mistakes are not repeated when we face our next health emergency.”

He added: “The question to Cameron, Osborne and Hunt must be: how did you allow the NHS and public health to get to such a parlous state, and fail to prepare so appallingly, that many didn’t stand a fighting chance when the wave crashed over them?”

George Osborne is due to give evidence to the Covid inquiry today after a doctor’s union said the former chancellor must be “taken to task” over austerity-era decisions that “left us so unprepared” for the pandemic.

In a statement read to the inquiry, Mr Osborne argued that the approach taken following the 2008 financial crisis “had a material and positive effect on the UK’s ability to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic”.

It comes after David Cameron said he is “desperately sorry” for the loss of life during the pandemic on Monday.

The former prime minister also told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry “a lot of things would have followed” if the assumptions on pandemic planning had been challenged.

We are pausing our coverage of the Covid inquiry.

We will be back tomorrow to bring you all the latest updates when former Chancellor Geroge Osbourne gives evidence to the inquiry.

David Cameron has now finished giving evidence to the Covid inquiry.