Covid inquiry live: Hancock ‘wanted to decide who should live or die if NHS became overwhelmed’
Lord Simon Stevens says Cabinet ministers ‘avoided’ Cobra meetings chaired by then-health secretary
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Ex-health secretary Matt Hancock believed that he – rather than doctors or the public – should decide “who should live and who should die” if hospitals became overwhelmed with Covid patients, the former NHS chief executive has said.
Lord Simon Stevens said that “fortunately this horrible dilemma never crystallised”, as he told the Covid inquiry on Thursday that it would have to look “very carefully” at the issue of asymptomatic Covid patients being discharged from hospitals into care homes.
Meanwhile, Mr Hancock, who was health secretary at the start of the Covid outbreak, told Public Health England’s then medical director Yvonne Doyle “not to patronise him” when she warned that the virus could be in the UK, she told the inquiry.
She said she was barred from doing media interviews for a time after that, and apologised to him, even though she had been telling the truth.
It comes a day after former top civil servant and ethics chief Helen MacNamara said the “female perspective” was missed during the pandemic as she condemned a “toxic” and “macho” culture at the highest levels of Mr Johnson’s government.
Inquiry will have to ‘very carefully’ look at hospital discharges into care homes
Lord Simon Stevens has told the Covid inquiry it will have to look “very carefully” at the issue of asymptomatic Covid patients being discharged from hospitals into care homes.
The former NHS boss said the risk was “in some senses” taken into account, but whether it was “appropriately” taken into account, “the inquiry will have to look very carefully”.
PPE stockpile was not sufficient, says ex-NHS boss
The former chief executive of the NHS has said the stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE) was “not sufficient” before the pandemic struck.
Simon Stevens told the Covid inquiry that this resulted in Britain trying to recover too late, resulting in Britain engaging in a “worldwide scramble for PPE”.
Watch: Hancock and Cummings tried to get rid of NHS boss, WhatsApp messages show
Boris Johnson wrong to blame lockdown on ‘bed-blockers’, Simon Stevens
Simon Stevens has said Boris Johnson’s belief that so-called bed-blockers were to blame for the government being forced to implement lockdowns is wrong.
The former NHS chief executive was shown testimony from Mr Johnson which said it was “frustrating” to have been forced into “extreme measures” to protect the NHS.
The then PM blamed the decision on the NHS’s “failure to grip the decades old problem of delayed discharge, commonly known as bed blocking”.
Bed blocking refers to patients who no longer need to be in hospital but cannot be discharged, often because they do not have a social care setting to be discharged to.
Lord Stevens told the Covid inquiry: “I don't think that is a fair argument in describing the decision calculus.”
Hancock ‘wanted to decide who should live and die’ if hospitals overwhelmed
Matt Hancock wanted to decide “who should live and who should die” if hospitals became overwhelmed by coronavirus patients, the former NHS chief executive said.
Lord Simon Stevens’s witness statement said: “The secretary of state for health and social care took the position that in this situation he – rather than, say, the medical profession or the public – should ultimately decide who should live and who should die.
“Fortunately this horrible dilemma never crystallised.”
Giving oral evidence to the inquiry, Lord Stevens added: “I certainly wanted to discourage the idea that an individual secretary of state, other than in the most exceptional circumstances, should be deciding how care would be provided.
“I felt that we are well served by the medical profession, in consultation with patients to the greatest extent possible, in making those kinds of decisions.”
Watch: ‘Decision-makers did not know how NHS worked', says Lord Simon Stevens
Tories losing more voters to Farage’s Reform UK than Labour, poll finds
Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives are losing more of their 2019 voters to the right-wing Reform UK party than to Labour, a shock new poll suggests.
Only one in 10 voters (11 per cent) who backed the Tories at the last election have switched to Keir Starmer’s party, a new YouGov survey found. But the poll found that slightly more (12 per cent) of voters who supported the Tories last time have switched to Reform UK.
The results suggests that Labour is still struggling to win over Conservative voters – and that Mr Sunak is under increasing pressure from the right.
The party co-founded by Nigel Farage – who remains honorary president – has seen its rating rise in recent months. The YouGov poll has Reform UK unchanged at 8 per cent, while the most recent Opinium poll has it up to points on 8 per cent.
Our political correspondent Adam Forrest has the full story here:
Tories losing more voters to Farage’s Reform UK than Labour, poll finds
YouGov survey suggests Keir Starmer still struggling to win over 2019 Conservative voters
Revealed: Ministers braced for 840,000 Covid deaths
The Covid inquiry has seen slides from a planning exercise which shows ministers expected 840,000 deaths in a “reasonable worst case scenario”, reports our political correspondent Archie Mitchell.
The exercise, on February 12, asked attendees to look forward to 14 April 2020.
It “helped sensitise” government departments to the type of pressures Britain might experience.
Watch: ‘People did not think Covid measures were fair', says former NHS chief
NHS boss: ‘Occasional moments of tension and flashpoints’ but Hancock was trustworthy
The chief executive of the NHS during the pandemic has said Matt Hancock was trustworthy, but that the pair had “occasional moments of tension”.
Simon Stevens declined to pile in after days of hearings in which the then health secretary was described as a liar and someone who could not be trusted.
Lord Stevens said Mr Hancock was somebody he trusted “for the most part”, adding: “I'm not denying that there were a small handful of occasions during the course of a year, year and a half, when there were tensions.
“But that I don't think is particularly surprising given the circumstances under which everybody was working.”
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