Johnson’s government ‘acted like an opposition party’ as Covid approached

Boris Johnson’s government acted like an “opposition” party and may have lost control of Covid-19 almost three weeks before the first national lockdown was introduced, a top civil servant admitted today.

Giving evidence to the UK’s Covid-19 inquiry, former cabinet secretary and head of the civil service Mark Sedwill echoed previous testimony on the chaotic early days of the pandemic in Number 10.

As well as conflicting predictions of possible death tolls, the then prime minister reportedly received no updates on the virus during a key ten-day period in late February, while vital COBRA meetings were delayed because of concerns that Matt Hancock was only calling them to make himself look important.

The inquiry’s lead counsel Hugo Keith KC asked Sedwill whether the government had lost control by March 3.

“We didn't understand that at the time,” said Sedwill, who was also national security adviser from 2018 to 2020. “That wasn’t the advice I think SAGE [the government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies] gave us at the time.

“But, given what we discovered less than ten days later, then the disease must have been moving faster, and was more widespread than we knew at that time.”

Keith also asked Sedwill: “Do you agree the government should have appreciated sooner than it did that the NHS would be overwhelmed, which, of course, was the trigger for the decision to impose the national lockdown [on 23 March], and the measures the week before?”

Sedwill responded: “I think I think I would go further. I would accept that in almost all of these cases. We should have realised earlier.”

Keith asked: “Had the risk to the NHS been appreciated sooner, it would have been open to the government, would it not, to introduce the measures that it did introduce on 16 March, at an earlier stage when the incidence of virus was lower? Correct?”

Sedwill replied: “Yes, that wasn’t the scientific advice, of course, but of course, you’re right. The government could have done so.”

The inquiry was also told of problems with early data gathering. On February 28, 2020, it was thought that there were just 19 Covid-19 cases in the UK. The real figure was later estimated to be four times as many, according to Sedwill.

And in a WhatsApp exchange on 4 March with Christopher Wormald – the chief civil servant at the Department of Health and Social Care now and throughout the pandemic – Sedwill said he had been given a predicted UK death toll of 600,000. This was double the figure given to him the day before.

Asked about a reference to “stupid decisions” being made on the basis of the numbers, Sedwill said he was referring to conflicting and rapidly changing data impeding decision making.

Similar claims about poor data handling in the early days of the pandemic have previously been heard by the inquiry.

Commenting on the character of Johnson’s government as coronavirus arrived in the UK, Sedwill compared it to a newly elected party rather than one that had been governing the country for almost a decade by the time of his December 2019 general election victory.

He said: “It was overall more like an opposition party, coming into power after a general election, than a government that had been in power for ten years, because of the nature of the Brexit process and the changing personalities that Mr Johnson brought in when he became prime minister.”

Of Johnson’s newly appointed cabinet, Sedwill said then health secretary Matt Hancock was one of the few with significant prior ministerial experience.

However, he still felt he had to initially rebuff a request from Hancock in January 2020 for a special COBRA meeting on Covid-19, saying he was concerned that COBRA meetings should not be “convened for communications purposes”.

Asked if he was concerned Hancock had been seeking to “make a splash” in raising attention to the virus, the former civil service chief called it a “fair summary of my thinking”.

Sedwill also addressed comments he made comparing Covid-19 to chickenpox.

He told the inquiry: “These were private exchanges I had not expected to be made public.

“I understand the interpretation that has been put on it must have put across that someone in my role was heartless and thoughtless.

“I’m not, and I understand the distress that caused.”

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