Covid inquiry live: Priti Patel admits policing of Sarah Everard vigil was ‘totally inappropriate’

Boris Johnson was “all over the place” and Rishi Sunak kept using “increasingly specific and spurious arguments against closing hospitality” at a meeting prior to the announcement of the second lockdown, the Covid-19 inquiry heard today.

The hearing was shown an extract from the notebooks of former chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance as the second wave of the virus swept through the UK.

The extract, from early October 2020, read: “Very bad meeting in no.10... PM (Prime Minister) talks of medieval measures than ones being suggested. Perhaps we should look at another approach and apply different values... Surely this just sweeps through in waves like other natural phenomena and there is nothing we can do.

“As Simon Ridley said final slide, PM said ‘Whisky and a revolver’. He was all over the place. CX (Chancellor) using increasingly specific and spurious arguments against closing hospitality. Both of them clutching at straws...

There are really only three choices for the high prevalence areas... 1) Do a proper lockdown 2) Use military to enforce the rules 3) Do nothing and do a ‘Barrington Declaration’ and count the bodies (poor, old and BAME). When will they decide.”

Boris Johnson raged that he was “smashing up the economy” and had “no idea how many times we are going to have to do it” by implementing lockdowns to control the pandemic.

The frustrated former prime minister got to the point where he was urging officials to consider “jacking in” the strategy of controlling the pandemic, hand-written notes shown to the Covid inquiry reveal.

In the latest extract from Sir Patrick Vallance’s pandemic diaries, he said Boris Johnson was seen as “owning the reality for a day” before being “buffeted by a discussion with Rishi Sunak”.

Ahead of a meeting to discuss the tiered lockdown system or a so-called “circuit breaker” in October 2020, Simon Ridley spoke with Sir Patrick.

Sir Patrick’s diaries reveal that Mr Ridley said Mr Johnson wanted to “avoid making a whole load of decisions that then get undone by [the chancellor]”.

Sir Patrick added that Mr Ridley described Mr Johnson wanted to achieve “a series of mutually incompatible options”. And Mr Ridley said Mr Johnson “owns the reality for a day and then is buffeted by a discussion with [the chancellor]”, the diary entry shows.

Department of Health (DHSC) staff were “not concerned” about discharging elderly people into care homes with Covid until months after the pandemic struck, the official pandemic probe has heard.

An email thread between top officials at No10 and the Cabinet Office in April 2020 shown to the Covid-19 Inquiry reveals increasing fears about the spread of the pandemic in hospitals and care settings.

But, asked by a member of the Covid-19 taskforce, a director in the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said infections that were picked up in hospitals and spread into care homes were “not an issue of concern”.

Boris Johnson joked about the Treasury being “the pro-death squad” during the pandemic because it wanted to ease lockdown restrictions quickly, Sir Patrick Vallance’s diaries have revealed.

The former chief scientific adviser recorded a meeting in which the former PM said he wanted to lift all Covid restrictions by September 2020.

In an extracts from his diary, shown to the Covid inquiry, Sir Patrick said Mr Johnson “ended up by saying the team must bring in the pro-death squad from HMT [Her Majesty’s Treasury]”.

The scenario pictured below was shown to Boris Johnson in September 2020 by the Covid-19 taskforce, outlining a hypothetical scenario for the middle of October ahead of a decision on a so-called “circuit breaker” lockdown.

The Covid inquiry has heard that Mr Johnson then did not take that option.

Simon Ridley has told the Covid inquiry he was not consulted about the Eat Out to Help Out scheme during the pandemic.

That “was decided by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor”, the former head of the Covid-19 taskforce said.

A surprised lead counsel Hugo Keith KC said: “You were the single body tasked with sensitising the policy and strategy for responding to the virus and giving advice to the government telling them how it should be responded to.”

“You must have been extraordinarily concerned,” he added.

Mr Ridley squirmed over his answer, before saying: “Things happen that surprise… we were focused on the advice we could give.”

Mr Keith said: “Because you were effectively blindsided by the Treasury and there was nothing you could do?” “Correct,” Mr Ridley said.

Simon Ridley has been asked by the Covid inquiry’s lead counsel Hugo Keith KC whether the Cabinet Office and No10 had to “push” the Department of Health to address the issue of testing NHS patients before discharging them into care homes and the testing of social care staff.

He was asked if they had to say “what is going on? What is being done about this? What can be done to solve these grave problems?”

Mr Ridley, the former head of the Cabinet Office’s Covid-19 taskforce, said: “Yes, that is broadly correct.”

Simon Ridley, the former head of the Cabinet Office’s Covid-19 taskforce, has said there were “too many meetings” during the pandemic and a “profusion of officialdom”.

Mr Ridley told the Covid inquiry it was “confusing” for staff inside the Cabinet Office and other departments, with those in the Department of Health “incredibly busy”.

“There was too much activity,” he said.