Boris Johnson says it is nonsense to claim he kept Matt Hancock in post so he could be ‘sacrifice’ for the UK Covid inquiry – live

Johnson says it is ‘nonsense’ to claim he kept Hancock in post so he could be ‘sacrifice for inquiry’

Johnson defends Matt Hancock, the health secretary. He says he thought he was doing a good job. He was intellectually able and on top of his department.

And he says he did not see why it would be good to replace him with someone who might not be better.

He says control of the pandemic was centralised in No 10.

Q: Mark Sedwill said in July you should sack him, you knew he had a tendency to over-promise, you knew people did not trust him, but you stuck with him?

Johnson says it was not obvious that sacking him would help. And in politics someone is always urging you to sack someone, he says.

Q: Dominic Cummings says you wanted to keep Hancock “as the sacrifice for the inquiry”.

Johnson says he does not remember that at all.

He goes on to say it’s “nonsense”.

Hancock was a good communicator.

Q: Sedwill said he told you to sack Hancock “to save lives and protect the NHS”.

Johnson says he does not remember.

And that’s it.

Lady Hallett says Johnson has had a long day. And she says he will have a long day tomorrow, when he is back giving evidence for another whole day.

Updated at 11.35 EST

Key events

Rwanda bill fails ‘fatally flawed’, says source close to former home secretary Suella Braverman

Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, believes the Rwanda bill does not go far enough. A source close to her said:

This bill doesn’t come close to meeting Suella’s tests. The prime minister has kept the ability for every single illegal migrant to make individual human rights claims against their removal and to then appeal those claims if they don’t succeed at first. It is fatally flawed. It will be bogged down in the courts for months and months. And it won’t stop the boats. It is a further betrayal of Tory voters and the decent patriotic majority who want to see this insanity brought to an end.

Braverman set out her five tests in a personal statement in the Commons this afternoon. (Cabinet ministers can make a personal statement to MPs when they resign. Braverman was sacked, and it was more than three weeks ago, but she was allowed to make her statement anyway.)

As the BBC reports, here are the five tests she set for a Rwanda bill. The BBC describes them as:

1) It must address the supreme court’s concerns about the safety of Rwanda

2) It must pave the way for flights to Rwanda before the next election “by blocking off all routes of challenge”, including under the Human Rights Act, the ECHR, the Refugee Convention, and all other international law

3) It must ensure removals to Rwanda can take place within days of people arriving illegally, rather than allowing challenges which drag on for months

4) It must allow people who arrive illegally to be detained until they are removed, and “Nightingale-style detention facilities” must be built to enable this, like Nightingale hospitals were built to deal with Covid

5) Parliament must be prepared to sit over Christmas to get this bill passed

Johnson booed as he leaves Covid inquiry

Boris Johnson was booed as he left the Covid inquiry a few minutes ago. The National has the clip.

Here is Rajeev Syal and Kiran Stacey’s story about the Rwanda bill.

Rishi Sunak is about to address the backbench Conservative 1922 Committee.

This is from the Sun on Sunday’s Kate Ferguson, who is with journalists in the corridor outside the room in the Commons where the meeting is taking place.

Updated at 12.17 EST

Colin Yeo, a barrister specialising in immigration law, has posted a first-take analysis of the Rwanda bill in a series of posts on X. He says he thinks the bill does not breach international law, but that deportations under the bill could be unlawful under international law.

Sunak says new Rwanda bill will disapply Human Rights Act for small boat deportations

Commenting on the Rwanda bill (see 4.41pm), Rishi Sunak said:

I have been unequivocal that we can no longer tolerate the endless scourge of illegal migration on our country.

It is costing us billions of pounds and costing innocent lives, and that is why we are taking action to put a stop to it and make clear once and for all that it is parliament that should decide who comes to this country, not criminal gangs.

Through this new landmark emergency legislation, we will control our borders, deter people taking perilous journeys across the Channel and end the continuous legal challenges filling our courts.

And we will disapply sections of the Human Rights Act from the key parts of the bill, specifically in the case of Rwanda, to ensure our plan cannot be stopped.

Updated at 12.18 EST

Government publishes its new Rwanda bill intended to allow deportations to go ahead

The government has just published its bill intended to enable Rwanda deportation flights to take off. It’s called the safety of Rwanda (immigration and asylum) bill.

Johnson says it is ‘nonsense’ to claim he kept Hancock in post so he could be ‘sacrifice for inquiry’

Johnson defends Matt Hancock, the health secretary. He says he thought he was doing a good job. He was intellectually able and on top of his department.

And he says he did not see why it would be good to replace him with someone who might not be better.

He says control of the pandemic was centralised in No 10.

Q: Mark Sedwill said in July you should sack him, you knew he had a tendency to over-promise, you knew people did not trust him, but you stuck with him?

Johnson says it was not obvious that sacking him would help. And in politics someone is always urging you to sack someone, he says.

Q: Dominic Cummings says you wanted to keep Hancock “as the sacrifice for the inquiry”.

Johnson says he does not remember that at all.

He goes on to say it’s “nonsense”.

Hancock was a good communicator.

Q: Sedwill said he told you to sack Hancock “to save lives and protect the NHS”.

Johnson says he does not remember.

And that’s it.

Lady Hallett says Johnson has had a long day. And she says he will have a long day tomorrow, when he is back giving evidence for another whole day.

Updated at 11.35 EST

Johnson says he has called Helen MacNamara to apologise for c-word expletive about her in No 10 WhatsApp exchange

Keith shows an exchange of messages between Mark Sedwill, the former cabinet secretary, and Simon Case, his successor.

Exchanges between Sedwill and Case. Photograph: Covid inquiry

Johnson says he does not recall any conversations with Sedwill or Case about behaviour.

He repeats his point about it not being a bad thing having people there who could “challenge the consensus and get things done”.

Q: But lots of things were not done.

Johnson says, when it came to the management of the pandemic, he does not think any feuding between officials made “the slightest difference” to processes or decision making.

Q: The inquiry was shown a particularly offensive WhatsApp message about Helen MacNamara from Cummings to you and others. You never complained about that.

Johnson says he does not remember that, but he must have seen it. He was on the group. He says he has called MacNamara to apologise for that.

Updated at 11.25 EST

Keith says Johnson himself described the government as “an orgy of narcissism”.

Johnson says that was at the end of the process.

Updated at 11.17 EST

Johnson says he sometimes spoke bluntly in meetings ‘to give people cover to do the same’

Q: A lot of evidence has been given to the effect that No 10 was dysfunctional.

Johnson says no one put it to him like that.

He says the country needed “continuous, urgent action”. He wanted meetings where people could speak their minds without fear.

And he says he sometimes spoke bluntly in meetings “because I wanted to give people cover to do the same”.

Lady Hallett intervenes. She says she wants to know if Johnson might have had a better framework for decision-making if a different culture had been in place. She says eventually they settled on the Covid-O and Covid-S committees (cabinet committees that managed Covid).

Johnson says Hallett has “put your finger on it”.

He says he wanted meetings where people said their piece.

For future pandemics, there should be more clarity about the difference between decision-making meetings and discussion meetings.

He says the PM should go into some meetings knowing that they are decision-making meetings. That was not happening, he says.

Updated at 11.17 EST

Johnson says culture at No 10 was ‘occasionally argumentative’, but says that was ‘no bad thing’

Keith comes back to the departure of Mark Sedwill. He says it will be for Lady Hallett to decide whether he was sacked or whether, as Johnson claims (see 11.21am), he moved on.

And he asks about the report that Helen MacNamara, the deputy cabinet secretary, compiled about the operation of No 10.

Johnson says he would rather have a No 10 where people challenged, and brought new ideas, and felt free to say things, than one where people pretended all was well.

Q: If you were concerned about civil service unease about Dominic Cummings, your response was to sideline Sedwill, and keep Cummings.

Johnson says that is Keith’s way of putting it.

Sedwill told him he wanted to move on, Johnson claims.

As for the culture, “it was occasionally argumentative, but that was no bad thing”, he says.

Updated at 11.18 EST