Matt Hancock tells inquiry there was ‘toxic culture’ in No 10 and he was ignored when he tried to raise alarm about Covid – live

Key events

Dominic Cummings has tweeted again about Hancock’s evidence. He claims Hancock is wrong about asymptomatic transmission. (See 11.45am.) For once, he is not accusing Hancock of lying; he just claims Hancock is “confused”.

Hancock talking rubbish on asymptomatic

1/ it’s in the whatsapp group 11/3 Hancock claiming tests don’t work on asymptomatic & Vallance telling him ‘wrong’ tests DO work – Hancock kept repeating this false idea (badly confusing the PM on the issue & he repeated the misinformation to Cabinet, cf. minutes)

2/ me saying 19/3 we shd do a *large scale random national survey* precisely cos it was crucial to figure out *the asymptomatic rate*, which wd help the whole world not just the UK – Vallance agreed with this idea & we did it with ONS

3/ NERVTAG in JANUARY. If he’d read the report (his job) he’d have known then

Hancock, Trolley, & Sedwill statements to inquiry show they STILL do not understand their own misconceptions on this subject in Q1-Q2 2020 (I think here Hancock was genuinely confused / rubbish, not lying)

Keith shows an exchange of messages between Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, and Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical adviser, in July 2020. In it, Vallance says he does not know why Boris Johnson and Hancock were claiming they were not told about asymptomatic transmission.

Exchange of messages between Vallance and Whitty in July 2020. Photograph: Covid inquiry

Hancock says he and Johnson were not complaining about not being told about the possibility of asymptomatic transmission. They were complaining about the scientists not treating it as the norm. He says the messages in this exchange show the scientists were not certain.

Updated at 06.57 EST

No written evidence to support Hancock’s claim he told Johnson on 13 March 2020 to order lockdown, inquiry hears

Hancock claims that on Friday 13 March, the day after he sent the “better prepared” message (see 10.52am) and after he had changed his mind about the seriousness of the situation, he told Johnson the government should lock down.

Keith points out that Hancock does not mention this in his book, Pandemic Diaries. He suggests that Hancock would have wanted to mention something this significant.

There is a whole page on how you woke up for the dawn flight to Belfast … there was from the prime ministerial meeting, prime ministerial papers, a video call and according to your book you said: ‘I called the prime minister and told him we’d have to do some very rapid back-pedalling on the issue of herd immunity, then rang Patrick who promised to do his best to repair the damage.’

Telling the prime minister of this country for the first time that he had to call an immediate lockdown is surely worthy of some recollection, is it not?

Hancock claims that, when writing the book, he did not have full access to his papers. He says this fact come to light when he was researching his papers ahead of this inquiry.

Keith says Hancock says in Pandemic Diaries that the account it contains has been “meticulously pieced together” from formal papers, notes and WhatsApp messages. And he says the inquiry has seen no evidence that Hancock did tell Johnson on 13 March there should be a lockdown.

He asks Hancock if he is sure that that is what he told Johnson.

Hancock replies: “I can remember it.”

He says the evidence came to light when he was preparing for the inquiry.

Updated at 06.14 EST

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

What 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 down 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 04.37 EST