The former Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who was kicked out of No10 at last year’s General Election, was Chancellor as the virus swept the country in March 2020
Rishi Sunak has claimed ministers were told not to go “too early” with Covid restrictions due to fears over “public acceptance”.
The former Tory PM, who was kicked out of No10 at last year’s General Election, was Chancellor as the virus swept the country in March 2020. His comments came after the Covid inquiry chaired by Baroness Heather Hallett published a damning report last month into government decision making during the crisis.
It branded government inaction “inexcusable” and said it was repeatedly slow to bring in restrictions, costing thousands of lives and making full lockdowns necessary. But speaking to the Covid inquiry under oath yesterday, Mr Sunak said the initial advice Treasury officials were given was not to intervene too early.
He said: “Especially in those early conversations, a lot of what the medical and scientific community were advising us at that time was not to go too early with the various interventions, because they were worried about public acceptance of them. Even at that point, there was a belief that voluntary social distancing together with school closures… would be sufficient to manage the virus.
READ MORE: Four things UK could’ve done differently after Covid delays cost 23,000 Brit lives
He added: “Two or three days after, it was decided that wasn’t going to be achievable, which is why we had to move to a full mandatory lockdown.” In his second appearance at the inquiry on Monday, Mr Sunak also offered his condolences to relatives of people who lost their lives as the virus struck.
He said: “I would like to extend my condolences to all those families who lost their loved ones during Covid, remembering those we lost and all those who suffered.” Mr Sunak said there was an “enormous amount of uncertainty” about the virus, having been appointed Chancellor in February 2020.
He addded: “There wasn’t a toolkit – there was not a playbook that you could pull off the shelf to say this is how you tend to deal with pandemics, in the same way you somewhat have with other economic or financial shocks.”
Giving evidence on the government’s economic response, the ex-PM said not all jobs could be saved during the crisis but insisted ministers wanted to prevent “mass unemployment”. He said: It wasn’t going to be possible to save every person’s job and people were going to experience economic hardship as a result of what was happening.
“I thought it was important to be honest with people about that up front. As it turned out, the impact on living standards, particularly for the most vulnerable in society… were stronger than I would have perhaps anticipated going into this and I’m very proud of that.”
Mr Sunak said the government was “successful in preventing mass unemployment” and that the impact on jobs was “considerably better than what anyone had forecast at the early stages of the pandemic”. The coronavirus job retention scheme – known as furlough – was announced by Mr Sunak in March 2020. Around 11.7 million employee jobs were furloughed through the scheme, which applied from March 1 2020 to September 30 2021, and cost around £70 billion.