What we learned from this week's COVID inquiry
Sir Patrick Vallance, Professor Sir Chris Whitty and Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam were asked about their time advising the government on the virus as part of the 'UK decision-making and political governance' module.
Thursday 23 November 2023 13:13, UK
This week three familiar faces from the government's daily COVID news conferences gave evidence to the public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic.
Sir Patrick Vallance, Professor Sir Chris Whitty and Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam were asked about their time advising the government on the virus as part of the 'UK decision-making and political governance' module.
They were quizzed on their dealings with politicians when they first thought COVID was a serious threat and the impact on their personal lives.
Here are three revelations from each adviser you may have missed.
Sir Patrick Vallance
Former chief scientific adviser
'Rishi thinks just let people die'
Sir Patrick Vallance kept a diary throughout the pandemic, submitting it all as evidence to the inquiry.
One of the most damning revelations brought up during his evidence this week was Sir Patrick's account of an argument between then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his former aide Dominic Cummings.
Sir Patrick wrote that arguing against a lockdown, Mr Johnson said he wanted to "let it [the virus] rip" and that those who would die had "had a good innings".
In his entry, he added that Mr Cummings alleged "Rishi thinks just let people die and that's OK".
The then government adviser said both comments pointed to a "complete lack of leadership".
Boris Johnson was 'clearly bamboozled'
Another entry from May 2020 detailed a "meeting with [the] PM on schools".
Sir Patrick wrote: "My god this is complicated and models will not provide the answer. PM is clearly bamboozled."
A different extract from a month later said that "watching [the] PM get his head around stats is awful" and that it was a "real struggle" to get him to "understand graphs".
Commenting on them during his evidence, Sir Patrick said: "He did struggle with some of the concepts and we did need to repeat them often."
Matt Hancock 'had a habit of saying things he didn't have a basis for'
Asked about his interactions with key ministers, he told the inquiry there was sometimes "pressure" on him and his colleagues to "change our advice" on COVID.
In particular, he spoke about then health secretary Matt Hancock, saying: "[Mr Hancock] asked me to change something and I said no, we are not going to change our advice."
Elaborating on Mr Hancock's approach, he said: "He had a habit of saying things which he didn't have a basis for.
"He would say them too enthusiastically, too early without the evidence to back them up and then have to backtrack from them days later.
"I don't know to what extent that was over-enthusiasm versus deliberate. I think a lot of it was over-enthusiasm, but he definitely said things that surprised me because I knew that the evidence base wasn't there."
Professor Sir Chris Whitty
Chief medical officer for England
Boris Johnson 'has quite unique style'
In contrast to his colleague Sir Patrick, Professor Sir Chris said it was not his job to "make commentaries on individual politicians".
But asked about Mr Johnson's leadership style, he said: "I think the way that Mr Johnson took decisions was unique to him.
"He has quite a distinct style but I think lots of other people have got quite distinct styles."
Pressed on whether his premiership was chaotic, he said: "It was quite often chaotic, but actually, I'd be very doubtful if it wasn't chaotic in multiple other governments."
Herd immunity was 'clearly ridiculous' and 'very dangerous'
When quizzed about the concept of herd immunity, Professor Whitty said the discussion around it was "frankly unhelpful" and led by people in governent who "had at best half-understood the issue".
He described it as a "clearly ridiculous goal of policy" and "very dangerous".
"It would have been inconceivable that this should have been an actual goal of policy because it would have led to an extraordinarily high loss of life," he told chief counsel for the inquiry Hugo Keith KC.
He added that it was "rightly" used by modellers to describe growing levels of immunity in the population - but it should only have ever been used in the sense of vaccine-induced immunity - not natural infection.
"We had no idea whether, even in a theoretical situation, the population would by natural infection even get to the herd immunity threshold."
'Hard geopolitical threats' like terror attacks treated differently to health ones
When talking about the national security system in government - Professor Whitty said that it "in my view, [is] underplaying, relative to other threats, natural threats including health theats".
He suggested that if there had been a warning about 100,000 people potentially dying as a result of a terror attack - the government reaction would have been different.
"The point I would like to make on this - because I think this is where we do need to think very seriously in government - is that had, let us say, the director general of MI5 come in or chief of general staff come in and said there's a possibility of 100,000 people sadly dying from terrorist attack or an attack on the UK, the chances this would have been the response in the letter or the system continued as it did - the next COBRA still chaired by the secretary of state for health - is quite small," he said.
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He added that he has long been concerned that "hard geopolitical threats are treated in a different way" to natural threats such as pandemics.
Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam
Former deputy chief medical officer for England
'I did not expect my family to be threatened with having their throats cut'
Professor Sir Jonathan stepped down from his government role in 2022.
He submitted evidence to the inquiry about "extremely hateful messages" he and his family received during his public-facing role.
Mr Keith KC asked if it left him "considering his position", to which he said yes.
"Where I think it finally got to me was the fact that I might have expected that if a crisis happened that this was my responsibility to bear.
"But I did not expect my family to be threatened with having their throats cut.
"I did not expect the police to have to say 'will you move out - in the middle of the night - middle of the evening - for a few days - while we look at this and potentially make some arrests."
But he added that his family didn't leave their home "because of the cat", which they "didn't want to leave".
Eat Out To Help Out 'didn't feel sensible'
All three advisers were asked about the government's Eat Out To Help Out scheme in 2020 - whereby restaurants offered discounts on food during the week - after Sir Patrick claimed in his diaries he was not consulted on it.
It was orchestrated by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor.
Professor Van-Tam said he wasn't consulted either and he first heard about it "on the TV".
Asked what he would have advised, he said: "I would have said this is exactly encouraging what we've been trying to suppress and get on top of in the last few months.
"I wouldn't have made any distinction between Eat Out To Help Out and any other epidemiological event that brought different households together for the purposes of socialising, eating and drinking alcohol.
"The net epidemiological effect is agnostic to 'what's on the menu' as it were. It didn't feel sensible to me."
Johnson hand-shaking comments 'rather unhelpful'
Boris Johnson said on 3 March 2020 - 20 days before the first lockdown - that he would "continue to shake hands" with people.
This was despite advice published by a government modelling group to replace handshakes with a contactless greeting and to increase hand hygiene.
Professor Sir Jonathan said that the "prime minister's involvement in a matter is symbolic and means it is more likely to be taken seriously".
And he added: "I do therefore consider the prime minister's comments on that day to have been spontaneous, ill-informed, and rather unhelpful".