Matt Hancock: My job was to shield NHS from political interference during Covid

Giving evidence to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, the former health secretary said part of his role was to “shield” the NHS from “people being difficult in Number 10”.

He said: “Within the running of the NHS, we were protected in a way because of the independence of the NHS.

“And therefore the people being difficult for Number 10, part of my job was to provide a shield from that.

“And I know that I ruffled some feathers in doing so, but my job was, ironically, also to protect the NHS from some of that.”

Mr Hancock, who was booed by a campaigner as he arrived to give evidence, told the inquiry that interference from Number 10 caused “incredible difficulties” with regards to testing people for Covid-19.

The third module of the probe is examining the impact of the virus on healthcare systems across the four nations.

Mr Hancock was asked by inquiry counsel Jacqueline Carey about his witness statements which suggested “inappropriate political interference from Number 10”, and whether that interference applied to the scope of these hearings.

He said: “Well, of course some of it did. For instance, the biggest interference that caused difficulties was within testing, where some of the political appointees in Number 10 caused incredible difficulties.”

Earlier, Mr Hancock also claimed that former first minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, caused “all sorts of difficulties” as the pandemic unfolded.

At the start of the inquiry hearing on Thursday, Mr Hancock was asked whether frontline staff had been protected during the pandemic.

He said government did “everything we possibly could”, adding: “Does that mean, in a system that employs 1.4 million people in the NHS, with another around two-and-a-half million in social care, that every decision was perfect? Of course, it wasn’t.”

Asked whether the imposition of visiting restrictions, which meant that some people could not be at the bedside of a dying relative, or have their partner with them in childbirth, were too strict, he said: “I think that we were balancing incredibly difficult considerations on both sides.

“I think, on balance, we got those broadly right across the pandemic, but I entirely understand and feel the very strong arguments on both sides.”

He added: “Where I think we got it wrong, for instance, was the way that the funeral guidance was applied on the ground, it wasn’t as had been intended.

“But of course, funerals are places where people gather and are deeply emotional and people come together, and that was also the thing that was driving the spread of the virus.

“So these were very difficult considerations, and broadly on balance, I think they were about right.”

The former MP also defended the ‘Stay Home, Save Lives, Protect the NHS’ messaging implemented during the pandemic.

Asked by if he thought the messaging had struck the right balance, Mr Hancock replied: “Yes.”

“We needed to ensure that the public across the whole of the UK understood the importance of staying at home whenever possible in order to stop the spread of the virus.”

He told the inquiry that “it was literally true that if we didn’t stop the spread of the virus, then the NHS would be overwhelmed, by which I mean the system as a whole would have been unable to cope with the demand on it, as we’d seen in other countries like Italy.”

Elsewhere, Mr Hancock said he challenged Public Health England – which was scrapped and replaced with the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) – “repeatedly” over concerns about asymptomatic transmission of the virus.

He said he was told at daily meetings about the virus from January 2020 that “tests don’t work if people don’t have symptoms”.

He added: “I challenged the advice from Public Health England repeatedly from then over the next three months, and eventually the formal advice was changed.”

He said he could see evidence from China of asymptomatic transmission but this was also refuted by the World Health Organisation.

“So the whole global clinical system was trying to say there’s no asymptomatic transmission.

“And I kept seeing straws in the wind, if you like, anecdotal evidence that there was, and continued to challenge on this point.”

Baroness Heather Hallett, who is chairing the inquiry, asked Mr Hancock about his comments that the NHS was available to all in the pandemic according to need.

She told him that people who needed cancer screening or who needed a major surgery like a hip operation could not access the care they required.

Mr Hancock replied “it was not safe clinically to go for some cancer treatment during the pandemic, because cancer treatment sometimes involves reducing the immune system.

“It was better to delay some non-urgent operations in order to protect both the space in the NHS and the patients themselves because, as we know, you’re more likely to catch Covid in a hospital than in almost any other setting.”

He said the “overall point is, that we did not have a collapse in the system”.

He added that he felt facemasks should be worn by hospital patients, visitors and staff “immediately” in the event of a future pandemic.

Mr Hancock served as health secretary from 9 July 2018 to 26 June 2021 and played a key role in the Government’s initial response as the pandemic unfolded.

He resigned from his post the day after video footage emerged of him kissing his former aide Gina Coladangelo in his ministerial office during a time of coronavirus social-distancing restrictions.

After his dramatic exit from the front bench, Mr Hancock appeared in the ITV reality show I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!