Now on bbc news, hardtalk. Welcome to hardtalk. Im stephen sackur. The uk has the highest covid 19 death toll in europe and one of the steepest declines in economic output. Opinion polls suggest Prime MinisterBoris Johnsons claims of a world beating governmental response cuts little ice with the public. My guest today isjeremy hunt, former Health Secretary, foreign secretary, and mrjohnsons rival for leadership of the conservative party. Has the pandemic exposed weaknesses in the countrys systems and its leader . Jeremy hunt, welcome to hardtalk. Thank you. One of your current parliamentary responsibilities is to hold the government to account, to scrutinise it, hold it to account on health policy. Do you think borisjohnsons government has a record to be proud of when it comes to covid 19 . Well, were still in the middle of the pandemic, so its probably too early to make that assessment. But were certainly not amongst the best. And i think the interesting thing, if you look at europe, is that france, spain, italy and the uk have all had pretty terrible pandemics. Germany slightly better, norway, denmark slightly better. But around the world, the real dividing line is between the east Asian Countries singapore, taiwan, hong kong, japan and europe and north america. And somehow in east asia, theyve got a whole bunch of things right that we havent got right in europe and north america. Yeah, i take that point, but even within europe, there are real differentials. Im thinking of germany, for example, or a country like denmark. I mean, it is the same virus faced by all of these countries, and yet we have performed particularly badly. When it comes to the death toll, its obvious. More than 55,000 people dead much the worst total in europe. Why . Well, in the case of germany, i think we can see a couple of things that they did well from the outset. The first is that they had a very rigorous test and trace system. They had these things called corona detectives in germany, that were local Council Officials who would go round rigorously tracking who had been infected, who they had been near, and trying to get them to isolate. And our Prime Minister told us that we were going to get a world beating test, trace, and isolate system. Simply hasnt happened, has it . Well, its happened in fits and starts. I think weve done better on the testing side than on the tracing side. But germany was doing this right from the start. They never stopped their Community Testing programme. We stopped our Community Testing programme in march, then we restarted it in the summer. But i think germany also benefited cos they had a decentralised system, and weve gone for a centralised approach. And in the end, i think if youre doing Something Like contact tracing, to go in on a localised basis, if you or i were asked to stop going to work, isolate in our home for two weeks, i think were probably far more likely to do it if were contacted by someone in our local council than someone from a call centre 300 miles away. There are many independent scientists, some of whom, in fact, advise the government on the sage committee, who say that they are now absolutely clear that the government locked down too late in march and that it has mishandled the second lockdown as well. Do you share that feeling . Well, i was one of the people who said they should have locked down earlier. But i think if you look at the scorecard of the government as a whole, you have to put other things into balance. I think the economic support that businesses have received has been some of the most effective in europe. And i think on the testing side, the expansion of Testing Capacity means that population testing, the sort of mass testing that we see in qingdao in china, in slovakia, in liverpool in the uk, we are probably closer to that than any major western european country. But when we consider lockdowns and what the government does in terms of the balance of Public Health and safety against maintaining economic activity, there is now a raging debate about christmas and what the uk government plans to do. It seems clear they want to, over the next few weeks, create a situation where, at christmas itself, the five day holiday period, theyre going to allow people much greater freedom to socialise with their families again. There are scientists, many of them senior advisers to the government, like andrew hayward, who are saying they feel this is a mistake. What do you think . Well, the virus doesnt care if its christmas or not. And the last thing we would want to do as a country is allow people to mix freely in christmas and then end up with a rise in infections injanuary and a rise in deaths in february. So the question is, can we get the transmission rates low enough ahead of christmas so that that doesnt happen and so we can keep a lid on the rate of transmissions as we wait to distribute the vaccine . And i think whats changed between now and a few months back is that we have this easter date, which both borisjohnson and the Health Secretary, matt hancock, have confirmed we could potentially vaccinate everyone vulnerable in the population by easter, and that would mean that was a real date that we could look at returning to normal. Andrew hayward is very specific. He says, my personal view is that were putting far too much emphasis on having a near normal christmas. We know respiratory infection rates peak injanuary. We are, in effect, throwing fuel on the fire over christmas. Were on the cusp, he says, of being able to protect elderly people we love through this vaccination, as youve just mentioned it. To him, it seems crazy that we are risking that by creating wider social bubbles, allowing maybe three households to mix over the christmas period. Thats what the governments talking about. Im asking you simply, do you believe they are wrong . Well, thats not just what the government is talking about. Theyre actually talking about making us have a lockdown until 2 december, making us stay in a very high degree of being locked down until just before christmas. No, with respect, theyve made it clear that whatever the regional tiers arrange after 2 december, shops, for example, will be allowed to open across the country. We know from a lot of Scientific Research that shops and households where families mix are the two key arenas where this virus is transmitted and spread. So, i put it to you again the government is clearly taking a risk. Do you believe that is wise . I think youre mischaracterising what the government is doing. To be clear, im someone whos criticised the governments approach at a number of key moments. But shops actually providing people are Wearing Masks is not the highest risk place. The highest risk places tend to be bars and places where people are speaking loudly, or people are singing. And they are talking about not allowing bars to open unless the transmission rates come right down. So my answer to your question very directly is if we can get the transmission rates down low enough so that christmas doesnt risk a further wave, a further spike in transmission, then i think its the right thing to do. But i dont think anyone would want to take that risk with christmas if it meant that, in february, we had a sudden spike in deaths. I am interested in your role on the Parliamentary Committee that scrutinises, holds to account the government on all things Public Health and, of course, covid i9 being central to that. The head of Amnesty International, kate allen, she said this of the record of the government on care homes and protecting the most elderly and vulnerable in the uk community. She said, the government has made a series of shockingly irresponsible decisions which effectively abandoned care home residents to die. Discharged without being tested, thousands of older people were sent to care homes at great risk to themselves, to other residents, and to staff. The appalling death toll was entirely avoidable. It is a scandal of monumental proportions. Where is the accountability for what happened in the care homes . Well, i think the government is being held to account by my select committee, but by people like kate allen, by the media. And it is very clear that there were lots of things done in other countries that we should have done here and we didnt. For example, in germany, care homes werent allowed to receive patients from hospitals unless they could quarantine them for two weeks or, indeed, unless they were tested. In hong kong, they sealed off care homes and that meant that they didnt have a single coronavirus death in any care home in hong kong. So there are clearly lots of things that we didnt do the first time round. Ithink. Which cost thousands of lives. And ijust wonder, if you were Health Secretary and youve served in that position, you know the weight of responsibility. If you had overseen this disaster, catastrophe, as Amnesty International call it, would you have stayed in post or would you have resigned . Well, ithink, you know, when youre looking at the incredibly challenging job of being Health Secretary, i think you have to make these judgments in the round. And one thing i would say about matt hancock is he has been absolutely indefatigable. Theres an enormous amount of pressure. And i think that the accountability in terms of peoplesjobs, you dont really want that happening in the middle of a crisis. Yes, at the end. Well, you sort of do. If the guy at the top has overseen a policy which was so catastrophically wrong, you want him out, you want somebody else in. Well, i think you also want people at the top who have learnt from whats gone wrong, who have understood and gone up that very steep learning curve about all the Scientific Evidence and all the judgments. And so i think, you know, someone changing their job in the middle of a crisis is not always what you want. Right, the questions arent just about care homes. You know that very well from your committee. Theres a huge question mark about procurement the way in which the government tried, under difficult circumstances, to ratchet up the procurement of protective equipment for Health Service workers, and indeed for care homes, as well. It seems to have been marked by incompetence and contracts being awarded to chums, friends of the government, people with key contacts. That cannot be acceptable, can it . Well, i think there are two things. Theres one thing the government got wrong, and theres Something Else where i think the government has a more reasonable case to make. What happened in care homes, one of the things that happened in care homes you rightly talked about them was that they found when there was a shortage of protective equipment at the start of the crisis, the nhs which is a huge supplier, a Huge Consumer of protective equipment crowded them out of the market. So care homes suddenly found, because all the local hospitals were trying to get ppe, they couldnt get any at all. And the lesson from that is that care homes have to be better prepared. In hong kong, they have to have three months stock of ppe, and we need to learn that lesson, as i think we did for the second wave. But we havent learned lessons, it seems. I mean, £250 million was spent on face masks which werent safe and could never be used. And on the flip side of that, when it comes to the friends being offered contracts, we know that there were strange deals done which involved middlemen middlemen who had contacts with the government. There was one particular spanish businessman who acted as a go between and ended up pocketing more than £20 million himself. Again, youre the head of this committee, which is supposed to hold the governments feet to the fire. What guarantee can you give the British Public that this wont happen again . Well, we held the Health Secretarys feet to the fire on that very issue this morning in the select committee, which ive just come from. So, absolutely, we ask all those difficult questions. But all i would say is that we. Well, difficult questions are one thing sorry to interrupt difficult questions are worthwhile, but. This is ourjob, because we are a scrutinising committee. Its what you do rather well, as well. But the public wants to know whats going to change . What has changed as a result of the exposure of this failure . Well, what has changed and let me now defend the government for a moment is having taken on board criticism of people like me and many other people about the shortages of ppe. This time around in the second wave, people generally have the protective equipment they need, both in hospitals and in care homes. But to get there in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of a global shortage of protective equipment, they had to act fast. And i think it wouldnt have been sensible or right for them to follow the normal procurement processes, because lives were at risk and speed was at a premium. So, yes, mistakes were made, but i would rather some of those mistakes were made and the problems solved, as i think it has now been. I now quickly want to look forward. There are two potential Game Changing developments. One is that testing is becoming much quicker and it can be rolled out on a vast scale. You appear to be suggesting that, right now, you think in the uk, we should insist on mandatory regular testing for the whole population. Do you seriously think that can and will happen . Ive never advocated compulsory testing, no, but what i do think is we should have mass testing, population level testing with incentives for people to participate. And perhaps the best example in europe is slovakia, where they managed to test nearly the whole population injust a weekend. Now, its a smaller country, but the result of that exercise nearly four Million People tested is that they reduced transmission by 85 . And if we want to get back to normal, if we want people to go back to the freedoms that matter so much to all of us, then you have to get transmission under control. So i do think population testing has got an Important Role to play. So you want people to do it, but you shy away from the word compulsion. But when it comes to the vaccines and we now know at least three, maybe more, but at least three vaccines look highly effective and could be rolled out, according to the uk government, late this year and then into the spring of next year there is a real question of how you ensure enough people are immunised to overall change the game, normalise life, and make sure covid i9 is a part of history, not our future. Is it conceivable it should and could become compulsory to get a vaccine . I dont think so. Its not the british way and i think the danger of making it compulsory is you would have an anti reaction, when its actually in everyones interest to get this vaccine. But i think the key thing is not to bet all our money on the vaccine, because there are still some uncertainties. The distribution is going to be very difficult. Both the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister seem to think we could get the vaccine out to all vulnerable citizens by easter which would be an amazing accomplishment, a big step forward. But we need to make progress on the mass testing side as well, so we have a plan b. On both the mass testing and the vaccination, youre indicating you want to see people take it up, but you dont want to force them to take it up. Youve introduced this notion of passporting. That is, parts of life would be open up to you if you have a passport ie, showing youve got a negative test and if you have another certificate or passport showing youve had the immunisation. 0ne airline in australia is going so far as to say, no jab, no fly. Now, thats not the same as a government demanding, forcing you to take the jab, but its getting pretty close. When we set up test and trace, the great hope was that it would be successful enough for us not to have to have a second lockdown. In the end, that didnt work out. And one of the reasons is because we didnt, through our test and trace system, have enough people complying with the request to isolate. They were worried about their income. And what we have to do is make it advantageous for people to do the right thing in terms of Public Health. So, yes, i do think the nhs app should record if youve had the vaccine, should record when youve had your last test. And if restaurants want to check up on that, then that is within their rights to do that. Because, of course, its not just about keeping you safe, its about keeping the other people in that establishment safe as well. Covid i9 has done extraordinary damage to the uk and indeed the world economy, and governments are having to figure out how they can try to get close to balancing the books in a very different economic environment. The british government, it is clear, intends as one cost saving measure to slash the foreign aid budget, to renege on its long term promise to spend 0. 7 of National Income on foreign aid every year. As a former foreign secretary, how do you feel about that . I would be very sad if thats what we ended up doing. Because, yes, this has been a very tough year for the united kingdom, but the World Bank Say that this year, between 100 150 million more people will go into extreme poverty. Thats a daily income of less than 1. 90 a day. And i dont think we should ask the worlds poorest to pay the price for some of these incredible challenges that we do admittedly face at home. Well, should we ask the British Public to continue to stump up millions of pounds for aid projects that include significant amounts of money going to countries like china, for example . No, and we are withdrawing our Aid Programme from both china and india for that reason. But there are other countries, particularly on the african subcontinent, where there is