Matt Hancock criticises ‘wholly naive’ and ‘hostile’ Covid inquiry

Matt Hancock has defended government deals to buy personal protective equipment (PPE) during the pandemic, saying the country was in a “desperate situation” at the time.

In a bad-tempered session at the Covid inquiry, the former health secretary repeatedly criticised the line of questioning describing it as “naive”, “hostile” and “inappropriate”.

He said he was “not at all surprised” when a so-called VIP lane for PPE suppliers with a political connection was set up, describing it as “standard practice”.

At one point, the chairwoman of the inquiry, Baroness Hallett, intervened, telling Hancock it was her job to learn lessons for any future pandemic.

Hancock was appearing for the fifth time at the Covid inquiry, which is now investigating the purchase and distribution of £15bn of PPE in the pandemic, along with testing kits, ventilators and other pieces of medical equipment.

He defended a public “call to arms” made at a Downing Street news conference on 10 April 2020 for more UK suppliers of PPE to come forward.

The inquiry has heard from previous witnesses, including the government’s former chief commercial officer Sir Gareth Rhys Williams, that the appeal was counterproductive, leading to a large number of approaches which threatened to overwhelm the system.

“We were radically short of PPE [at the time] and the country was about to run out at a national level,” Hancock told the inquiry.

“No-one has testified that the call to arms led to anything other than more PPE… So I stand by that.”

The former health secretary was then asked about the High Priority Lane, or VIP lane, which was set up by officials in the Department of Health in England to help manage offers by prioritising those referred by an MP, member of the House of Lords or senior civil servant.

Hancock said he was not involved in designing the system, which he said had made him the target of an “enormous amount of conspiracy theories”.

The inquiry commissioned an expert report from Prof Albert Sanchez-Graells, a professor of law at the University of Bristol, which was critical of the approach and found no evidence of similar prioritisation in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, or other countries around the world.

“It’s fine having academics write papers about this stuff… but you’ve got to understand what it was like [at the time],” said Hancock.

“The pressure to save lives was intense, but so was the reality that high-quality offers would be sent through to senior decision-makers, and you had to have a process for dealing with that.”

He said that other countries would have had their own systems for prioritising offers for PPE and medical equipment in different ways.

Hancock was later asked about a £30m contract awarded to a firm run by Alex Bourne, who owned a pub in his West Suffolk constituency, to make vials for Covid testing.

Emails show Hancock passed on communications from Mr Bourne to the then health minister Lord Bethell, describing his analysis of the wider testing system as a “very interesting critique” from a “very impressive guy”.

In questioning, Hancock said he acted with “impeccable behaviour” at the time, and accused the inquiry’s chief counsel Richard Wald KC of cherry-picking a “couple of messages” that have the “most tabloid interest”.

He said the inquiry had followed a “wholly naive” line of questioning by ignoring the reality of the situation at the time, while making “terribly pejorative” statements that were “totally inappropriate”.

At the conclusion of his evidence, Baroness Hallett told Hancock that he “was not the first and I’m sure won’t be the last witness to think the inquiry is all about criticising people”.

“My aim is to investigate what happened, to explore matters of public concern, to get people to answer on those areas, and to try to come up with recommendations that will save lives,” she added.