I first heard about Eat Out to Help Out on TV, says Van-Tam
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Prof Sir Jonathan Van Tam said that the first he heard of the Eat Out to Help Out Scheme was on the TV.
Asked by Mr Keith if he was consulted about the scheme, he said: “Absolutely not. The first I heard of it was I think on the TV”.
He added: “Had I been consulted I wouldn’t have made any distinction between Eat Out to Help Out and any other epidemiological event that brought different households into close contact with each other for the purposes of socialising, eating and consuming alcohol.
“That epidemiological effect is kind of agnostic to what was on the menu as it were. But I would have said this is exactly encouraging what we’ve been trying to suppress and get on top of for the last few months. It didn’t feel sensible to me”.
04:41 PM GMT
Covid Inquiry has finished for today
The Covid Inquiry has been drawn to a close by Baroness Heather Hallet.
Thanks for following The Telegraph’s live coverage. Check the website for the latest updates.
04:35 PM GMT
Baroness Hallett denounces those who threatend Van-Tam
Baroness Hallett, chairman of the Inquiry, told Sir Jonathan: “I just want you to be reminded the vast majority of the population abhor such conduct and we are enormously grateful to you and your colleagues for the way in which you served the public of this country in a time of national emergency.
“So please ignore the violent criminal idiot element and remember the rest of us are grateful.”
04:05 PM GMT
Police asked me to move my family over death threats, says Van-Tam
Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam has told the Inquiry that police asked him to move his family out of their home in the middle of the night following death threats during the pandemic.
He said they were “threatened with having their throats cut” and he considered resigning from his job as deputy chief medical officer as a result.
He said: “The workload was horrendous - 16 hours a day, seven days a week...
“Where I think it finally got to me, I might have expected that if a crisis happened, this was my responsibility to have that kind of workload [but] I did not expect my family to be threatened with having their throats cut.
“I did not expect the police to have to say ‘will you move out’ in the middle of the night, in the middle of the evening. ‘Will you move out for a few days while we look at this and potentially make some arrests?’
“We didn’t move out because of the cat as it happened. It was a very stressful time. And my family didn’t sign up for that.”
04:03 PM GMT
Van-Tam wanted to leave 'mark in the sand' by expressing concern over easing of restrictions
Prof Sir Jonathan said he wanted to leave a “mark in the sand” by writing a letter to the Government expressing his concern over the easing of restrictions in May 2020.
He was asked by Hugo Keith KC, inquiry counsel, about a joint letter he signed on May 26 2020 to Simon Case, the then permanent secretary in No 10, in which he acknowledged the “damage being done” to the health and welfare of society by virtue of the lockdown, but warned that easing of restrictions raised an “intolerable risk”.
“Multiple, small changes, appearing reasonable when examined in isolation, can easily lead to R going above 1,” the letter read.
Asked why he decided to sign the letter instead of continuing to give his advice orally to Government in his role as Deputy Chief Medical Officer during the pandemic, he said: “I wanted to leave a mark in the sand here.”
He added that he wanted to “lay down the trail in writing, and it was incontrovertible that we wanted to say that this needed to be taken very carefully.”
03:26 PM GMT
Public Health England’s risk assessment 'failed us', says Van-Tam
Public Health England’s risk assessment “failed us” as Covid began to emerge, Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam told the Covid Inquiry.
The former deputy chief medical officer said: “One of the things that I think where the risk assessment system has failed us is that whilst it may be extremely accurate, and I’m absolutely not calling into question the judgment of any of my PHE or wider health protection colleagues about the risk assessment, the problem is that it relates to the current moment.
“That unfortunately, when you then try and say, well, what does it mean for the future? You get into massive uncertainty, and that’s part of the problem.
“But equally, it doesn’t give any kind of flavour to the less experienced reader about what the range of possibilities kind of is in the future.”
Sir Jonathan added: “I think it’s very unfortunate that (the risk assessment) can be read as, well, (the risk) is low, just forget about it.”
03:21 PM GMT
Lockdown should have been imposed up to 14 days earlier, says Van-Tam
Prof Sir Jonathan Van-Tam said he believed lockdown should have been imposed seven to 14 days earlier than it was in March 2020.
He told the inquiry that his instinct reaction on imposing national restrictions was “not a day too soon”.
“With the benefit of hindsight,” he said, “I think I reflect that these measures would all have been better certainly seven days earlier than they were, possibly a little longer than that.
“So somewhere in the kind of seven to 14-day window, that would have perhaps been a bit more timely.”
He said his view on this was a reference to all the countermeasures that were imposed in March 2020, up until and including the full lockdown.
Asked by Baroness Hallett, the inquiry chair, whether he thought there was a chance the UK could have avoided the mandatory national lockdown had restrictions been imposed earlier, Prof Sir Jonathan said it was “impossible to say”, but that on the “balance of probabilities” there were probably no alternatives.
02:56 PM GMT
Van-Tam spoke to other countries in January 2020, Inqury hears
Prof Van-Tam has described co-ordinating the UK’s Covid response with international partners in January 2020.
02:34 PM GMT
Overwhelming workload during pandemic, says Van-Tam
Sir Jonathan said he and others were overwhelmed by the “horrendous” workload during the pandemic.
The former deputy chief medical officer added that he “lost track” of the number of meetings due to the sheer volume of them.
02:05 PM GMT
And we are back...
Welcome back, I hope you enjoyed the lunch break. Prof Sir Jonathan Van-Tam has been sworn in and is now being questioned.
Jonathan Van-Tam is the latest former government adviser with a front-row view of the pandemic to give evidence to the Covid Inquiry.
Mr Van-Tam was the deputy chief medical officer for England throughout the pandemic and played a significant role in the Government’s response.
01:12 PM GMT
Inquiry breaks for lunch
The Covid Inquiry has taken a break for lunch and it is due to resume at 2pm.
But if your appetite for Covid news still needs satiating, you can read a story by Associate Editor, Gordon Rayner, and Senior Reporter, Neil Johnston, on how a second lockdown could have been avoided, according to Prof Chris Whitty.
The chief medical officer told the Inquiry that the second lockdown, which began on Nov 5 that year, was “not necessarily inevitable”.
Here is the full story, enjoy.
12:42 PM GMT
Vallance frustrated with Sturgeon breaking ranks with the rest of the UK
Sir Patrick Vallance appeared frustrated over how Nicola Sturgeon “broke ranks” with the rest of the UK on face masks and schools in August 2020.
In a diary entry on August 24 2020 shown to the inquiry, the then chief scientific adviser wrote: “Scotland breaks ranks over face coverings and schools despite CMO having worked hard to get all CMOs aligned to a very good statement released before.”
It was announced at this time that pupils in Scotland would be told they must wear face masks in school corridors and communal areas - a policy that was not recommended by Public Health England at the time.
Another diary entry by Sir Patrick Vallance described a meeting with Boris Johnson about giving financial incentives to people for self-isolating in September 2020 which “descended in chaos”.
The entry from September 8 2020 read: “I made the point about having to give incentives for self-isolation - PM agreed and said he would take it up with Cx (the Chancellor) afterwards.
“Chris and I were aligned and presented what needs to be done. I left the call. Apparently it descended into chaos and CMO not clear where it will land.”
Asked about the note, Sir Chris said although he did not recall the exact meeting, “the general tenor of this is one which I recognise”.
12:39 PM GMT
Sunak challenged on Eat Out to Help Out in Commons
At Prime Ministers Questions on Wednesday, Rishi Sunak was challenged on whether scientists were consulted about Eat Out to Help Out.
It followed Sir Patrick Vallance telling the Covid Inquiry that Sunak hadn’t asked for advice on the scheme despite him telling the Commons that scientists were consulted at all stages of pandemic planning.
Mr Sunak said: “There is an ongoing statutory inquiry into Covid and it’s absolutely right that process is followed, and I look forward to giving evidence in the coming weeks and addressing all those quesitons.”
12:12 PM GMT
WhatsApp 'an appalling mechinism' for discussing technical issues, says Whitty
Prof Sir Chris Whitty said the messaging app WhatsApp was “an appalling mechanism” for discussing technical issues during the pandemic.
He told the Covid Inquiry on Wednesday: “We didn’t do very much technical stuff on WhatsApp unless it was extremely straightforward, like there have been three new cases or something of that kind.
“For something that has greater scientific subtlety... WhatsApp would be would not be an appropriate approach for trying to do that.”
11:31 AM GMT
Second lockdown could have been avoided, says Whitty
Sir Chris said a second lockdown could have been avoided if more action to stop the virus had been taken earlier.
Asked by Mr Keith that in Public Health terms if the government had an option, he said by the time of the second lockdown in November 2020 there were few options.
He said: “By the time it got to the stage of the second lockdown given the principal aims of ministers to minimise mortality, I couldn’t see many options.
“Whether other decisions could have been taken earlier to prevent it I think is in a sense quite an important question. But in terms of once we got to that point, I think the realisation was there wasn’t really much choice.”
Sir Chris was asked if a circuit breaker in September or introducing the tier system earlier there remained a possibility the second lockdown might not have been necessary or might not have been as long.
“I think most people would say that’s the case,” he said. “I think there are a variety of ways we could have potentially at least had a less onerous lockdown than we did on the second one, the third one my view, because it was a new variant I think, I would say probably we didn’t have any choices, but on this one I thought it was inevitable by the time we got there, but it wasn’t necessarily inevitable had previous decisions been different.”
11:13 AM GMT
Whitty can't recall Eat Out to Help Out discussions, Inquiry hears
Boris Johnson has previously told the Covid Inquiry that the Eat Out to Help Out scheme was “properly discussed”, including with top scientists.
However, Sir Chris asserted that neither he nor the then chief scientific adviser were ever advised on the scheme, which was the brainchild of the then chancellor Rishi Sunak.
Asked about Mr Johnson’s claim in his witness statement to the inquiry that it was properly discussed, Sir Chris said: “Neither Patrick nor I can recall it, and I think we would have done.”
Sir Chris also told the inquiry he made clear in his written evidence that there was “no consultation” with he or Sir Patrick Vallance over the scheme before it was introduced in autumn 2020.
10:47 AM GMT
No major revelations in Whitty's evidence, writes The Telegraph's Associate Editor Gordon Rayner
We have now had more than a day of evidence from Prof Sir Chris Whitty and his reflection on what happened in 2020 is that restrictions should have been put in place “several days” earlier, writes Associate Editor Gordon Rayner.
Sir Chris has told the Inquiry that “if we were to run this again” with the benefit of everything that is now known about the progress of the virus, he would have brought in the March 16 measures days earlier, but not weeks earlier.
On that day Boris Johnson urged people to work from home and avoid pubs and restaurants. A week later he issued his “stay at home” order to start the first national lockdown.
He said: “I think we would have brought in the 16th of March measures several days earlier. Not a long time earlier, but several days earlier. And personally, I would have added into those the measures on stopping hospitality.”
Anyone who hoped Sir Chris was going to bring major revelations to the Inquiry or admit to major errors will be disappointed with his evidence so far, which has been markedly free of the sort of criticism that former chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance made of ministers earlier in the week.
10:39 AM GMT
Talking about 'lockdown fatigue' unhelpful, says Whitty
Sir Chris said talking about lockdown fatigue in press conferences was one of the biggest communications errors he made during the pandemic.
The chief medical officer said his communications on the issue had been “really poor” and it was “probably my most prominent communications error”.
He said the idea of the public becoming exhausted from restrictions was already in the “general sphere”, but a debate was triggered by Sage “in part by me talking about it foolishly in press conferences” in early May 2020.
“The end result of that,” he told the inquiry, “was a statement by Sage firmly that this should not be taken as a reason to delay an action”.
Sir Chris said he was “told off” by his behavioural science colleagues as the way he had phrased it, he said, implied it had come from them, which it “absolutely had not”. They also pointed out to him that he had explained the idea “very poorly”, and Sir Chris discouraged others from talking about it in public.
“The concept was not unreasonable,” he added, “but linking it to the first lockdown was really unhelpful and that’s entirely on me on this one.”
10:32 AM GMT
Government Covid communications around herd immunity 'upset' Britons, says Whitty
There were communication errors around the idea of herd immunity, which upset and confused the public, the Covid Inquiry heard.
Sir Chris Whitty said: “I don’t think I ever saw anybody on the record, or anybody sensible, aiming for herd immunity as a goal.
“I definitely made communication errors through the pandemic, but my view was this was an area where communications were a long way from helpful to the public - which is really what this should be about because it gave an impression the government was pursuing a policy which it absolutely was not pursuing.
“And reasonably, people were upset about that policy because it would have been the wrong policy, but it wasn’t the policy.”
10:11 AM GMT
Whitty says Downing Street not 'seized of urgency' in early stages of pandemic
Sir Chris Whitty told the Covid Inquiry he is not convinced that “all parts of the Downing Street machinery” was “seized of the urgency” of action against Coivd in early March 2020.
He said: “What I think people were really not able to conceptualise was how exponential growth would turn from those apparently smaller numbers, still each one a tragedy, but smaller numbers to really very large numbers in an extremely short period of time because of the doubling time.”
Elaborating on which part of the “system” may not have fully understood, Sir Chris said: “I think actually it was a relatively widespread lack of understanding of where we were going ahead.
“I think the people who had been heavily involved in looking at this, and you know certainly Mr (Dominic) Cummings, and many others, I think had realised by now that this was heading in a very difficult direction. But I don’t think everybody in the building did.
He added: “This was a lot of people really not getting what exponential growth was actually going to mean.”
09:56 AM GMT
Herd immunity a 'ridiculous goal', says Whitty
Sir Chris Whitty said that pursuing a policy of herd immunity in March 2020 was a “ridiculous goal” and “very dangerous”.
Asked if he cautioned against public debate over herd immunity by Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel to the Inquiry, and whether it needed wider context, Sir Chris said it caused confusion and would have led to huge loss of life.
He said: “Well, my view was it was a clearly ridiculous goal of policy and a very dangerous one, and I thought a lot of what was being said could have led to considerable confusion, and indeed did, and I think, you know, I’ve laid out several times in public and I did say in my statement my view that it would have been inconceivable, led to extraordinary high loss of life.”
09:54 AM GMT
The Covid Inquiry gets worse by the day, says The Telegraph's Allison Pearson
The scientists are throwing bamboozled Boris under the bus, but their focus on flattening the curve ended up flattening a whole society, writes The Telegraph’s Allison Pearson.
Read the full article here.
09:45 AM GMT
Van-Tam arrives at Inquiry
Prof Sir Jonathan Van-Tam, the former deputy chief medical officer for England, has arrived at the Covid Inquiry.
He is expected to give evidence on Wednesday.
09:43 AM GMT
Questioning of Sir Chris has begun
Questioning of Sir Chris Whitty has resumed for a second day to give evidence at the UK’s Covid inquiry.
