The former health secretary Matt Hancock returned to the stand last week to face questions on the government’s decision making during the pandemic. Gareth Iacobucci reports
Matt Hancock, the UK health secretary between 2018 and June 2021, acknowledged major deficiencies in the country’s preparedness for covid-19 when first giving evidence to the UK covid-19 inquiry in June 2023.1 Last week he was resummoned to answer key questions about the government’s response to the pandemic.
Hancock told the inquiry2 that with hindsight the government should have imposed a lockdown three weeks earlier than it eventually did on 23 March 2020, which he said would have saved “many, many lives.” He said that after a Cobra meeting on 2 March, the official advice to ministers from the chief medical officer and chief scientific officer was not to go too early because of other considerations, such as the impact of a lockdown on wider society. He defended the government’s actions as “entirel
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