Matt Hancock denies being a liar and says Dominic Cummings created ‘culture of fear’ which undermined Covid response – live

Key events

Hancock dismisses claims he was over-confident, saying he had to keep system ‘driving forward’

Helen MacNamara, the deputy cabinet secretary, said you showed “nuclear” levels of confidence, Keith says. Is that fair?

Hancock says he reacted in different ways with different people.

In trusted environments, he was self-critical, he says.

But he says he also had to drive the system forward.

And he says no one complained about him being over-confident at the time. He goes on:

I was going in and saying we absolutely must do this. And there was a huge amounts of uncertainty and a huge amount of worry. And I basically felt it was my professional duty to try to keep going through, to keep driving forward.

UPDATE: Hancock said:

There was a huge amount of uncertainty and a huge amount of worry and I basically felt it was my professional duty to try to keep going, to try to keep driving forward.”

Of course I understand now that some people reacted in the way that they did, but it was a time of enormous uncertainty and a time when I just felt we needed to keep driving this system forward.

Updated at 06.07 EST

Keith shows an exchange of messages between Hancock and Boris Johnson in early March.

Exchanges between Hancock and Johnson in early March Photograph: Covid inquiry

Keith suggests that, at this point Hancock should have been asking for more help from No 10.

Hancock says by this time No 10 was fully engaged. Johnson had already chaired a Cobra. And he says the exchanges show him asking for a whole national effort on Covid.

Hancock says he was trying to ‘raise the alarm’ about Covid early, but ignored by No 10

Hancock is now deploying the defence previewed in the Observer on Sunday. (See 9.58am.)

He says from the middle of January the DHSC was “trying to effectively raise the alarm”. He says:

We were trying to wake up Whitehall to the scale of the problem and this wasn’t a problem that couldn’t be addressed only from the health department. Non-pharmaceutical interventions cannot be put in place by a health department. A health department can’t shut schools. It should have been grasped and led from the centre of government earlier. And you’ve seen evidence that repeatedly the department and I tried to make this happen.

And we were on occasions blocked, and at other times our concerns were not taken as seriously as they should have been until the very end of February.

So for instance, the very first time I tried to call a Cobra [a meeting of the Cobra emergency committee] I was blocked – ultimately only for 48 hours – because I then went to get other voices to call for a Cobra. And it happened.

Hancock claims diary evidence showing DHSC was seen by No 10 as chaotic shows there was ‘toxic culture’ in Downing Street

Keith shows three extracts from Sir Patrick Vallance’s diary criticising the DHSC.

This one, from June 2020, talks about the “massive internal operational mess” inside DHSC.

Extract from Vallance’s diary. Photograph: Covid inquiry

This one, from July 2020, quotes Sedwill talking about the “clear lack of grip” in DHSC.

Extract from Vallance’s diary. Photograph: Covid inquiry

And this one, from August 2020, quotes an email from DHSC describing it as “ungovernable”.

Extract from Vallance’s diary. Photograph: Covid inquiry

Hancock says some of Vallance’s diary entries were written after the event.

Keith pushes back at this. He says the vast majority of Vallance’s diary entries were written on the day. His diary was more contemporaneous than Hancock’s, he says.

Hancock goes on:

Did everything go right? Of course it didn’t.

He says it was natural for the Cabinet Office to be “sceptical” of government departments.

But he claims these entries were illustrative of the “toxic culture” in Downing Street, which was unhelpful. There was a desire to attribute fault and blame, he says.

Matt Hancock tells Covid inquiry there was ‘unhealthy, toxic culture’ at No 10 – video

Updated at 07.11 EST

Hancock says none of his predecessors had had to deal with a pandemic like this.

Keith says Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary at the time, said the Department of Health and Social Care was not resourced to deal with this. Sedwill said it was “under par”, Keith says.

Hancock says Sedwill did not use the phrase under par.

But it was clear the DHSC would have more to do, Hancock says.

Lady Hallett, the inquiry chair, starts by apologising to Hancock for the fact that he has had to give evidence more than once.

He also appeared during module one, when the inquiry was looking at pandemic preparedness.

Here is our report of that hearing in June.

Updated at 05.12 EST

Matt Hancock starts giving evidence to Covid inquiry

The hearing is starting. Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, is taking the oath. And he’s going to be questioned by Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel for the inquiry.

Updated at 05.05 EST

Dominic Cummings’ list of examples of when he says Hancock lied to No 10 about Covid

No witness has been more critical of Matt Hancock than Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser. In paragraph 508 of his witness statement Cummings gives a long list of times when he claims Hancock lied to No 10 about Covid arrangements.

Extract from Dominic Cummings’ witness statement Photograph: Covid inquiryWhat previous witnesses to Covid inquiry have said about Hancock

I was going to compile my own guide to the critical comments about Matt Hancock made by previous witnesses to the inquiry but, frankly, the list is so long that it would take quite a while. Luckily Dan Bloom and Noah Keate have done their own version for Politico’s London Playbook.

Hancock must now answer the Murder on the Orient Express-style procession of senior figures who’ve done him in. Greatest hits include Dominic Cummings calling him a “proven liar” … Helen MacNamara saying he’d say things in meetings that “we’d discover [weren’t] in fact the case” … Patrick Vallance saying he had a “habit” of saying things “without evidence to back them up” … Mark Sedwill texting that he needed removing to “save lives and protect the NHS” … Simon Case name-checking him in the government’s “weak team” … Manchester mayor Andy Burnham saying Hancock knew Tier 3 restrictions wouldn’t work when he imposed them … Simon Stevens saying he wanted to decide “who should live and who should die” … and Chris Wormald saying he “overpromised” (but not that he lied).

John Stevens at the Mirror has also got a longer version of the same list.

Updated at 09.12 EST

Matt Hancock appears at Covid inquiry

Good morning. With the possible exception of Boris Johnson, no one has received as much criticism from witnesses giving evidence to the Covid inquiry as Matt Hancock, who was health secretary for the first 15 months of the pandemic, including all three lockdowns. He has a lot to answer for and the inquiry has set aside a day and a half for his evidence.

As Toby Helm reported in the Observer at the weekend, Hancock’s allies believe he will hit back by arguing that his efforts to get No 10 to take Covid more seriously in early 2020 were ignored. Toby says:

Matt Hancock and his officials bombarded Downing Street with early warnings about Covid-19 but were treated with ridicule and contempt, according to senior Whitehall figures, who believe that the former health secretary is unfairly being made a scapegoat by civil servants and scientists during the official inquiry into the pandemic.

Attempts by the Department of Health, in mid to late January 2020, to raise the alarm were dismissed out of hand by senior staff working for the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, because they believed Hancock was mainly seeking publicity and exaggerating the dangers, the insiders say.

One with detailed knowledge of events at the time told the Observer: “The DoH was pushing really hard and the Cabinet Office and Downing Street were saying :‘Look, we’ve just had an election and we have got to get Brexit done: could you and your pandemic just fuck off and stop irritating us.’ They totally trivialised it and did not want to engage.”

I will be focusing on Hancock’s evidence for most of the day, but other politics will get a look-in too. Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Rishi Sunak is on a visit in Guildford.

9am: Gordon Brown, the former Labour PM, speaks at a Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Pay conference in Edinburgh.

10am: Matt Hancock gives evidence to the Covid inquiry. The hearing is scheduled to run all day and continue tomorrow.

10am: Alex Salmond, the former Scottish first minister who now leads the Alba party, is holding a press conference.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

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Updated at 04.36 EST