November 21, 2024 - 5:00pm
Matt Hancock has today told the Covid inquiry that efforts from other parts of Government to relax lockdown rules “stiffened his resolve” to extend them.
The inquiry, which at £208 million will be the most expensive in British history, heard that the former health secretary was “in a battle with other parts of Government to ensure that the measures that we were taking were enough to stop the spread of the virus”. “There was pressure from others to release measures which were, in my view, too soon,” Hancock said. “And it stiffened my resolve to resist those measures to relax too soon”.
Hancock was asked about how his experiences on the frontlines in A&E departments impacted his decisions. The former MP for West Suffolk told the inquiry that after a difficult shift in the Basildon hospital in January 2021 during the second wave of Covid, a doctor burst into tears and said to him: “We’re in a second wave, secretary of state, you cannot allow a third”. “We were also in the middle of the vaccine rollout which was the ultimate way out of it,” Hancock claimed. “And it was critical that we didn’t release too soon before the vaccine had the chance to work.”
The former health secretary also told the inquiry: “And I’d spent the whole Autumn before that fighting for lockdown to stop the second wave. I’d been determined to do everything I could but that [exchange with the doctor] made it even stronger.”
In the wake of Covid-19, the damage wrought from extended periods of lockdown and harsh restrictions is still being assessed, particularly in the health and social care sectors. A landmark 2023 report from the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) described lockdown as having a “catastrophic effect” on the country’s social fabric.
“During lockdown calls to a domestic abuse helpline rose 700%; mental ill health in young people went from one in nine to one in six and nearly a quarter amongst the oldest children,” the report stated. “Severe absence from school jumped 134%; 1.2 million more people went on working-age benefits, 86% more people sought help for addictions; prisoners were locked up for 22.5 hours per day.”
NHS waiting list figures from the British Medical Association (BMA) for September 2024 showed that there was a median waiting time for treatment of 14.4 weeks, which is nearly double the pre-Covid median wait of 8.0 weeks in August 2019.
When asked whether the NHS was up to the task when the pandemic hit, Hancock said: “Of course every part of the NHS was under pressure and some individual parts found that overwhelming. But the system as a whole withstood the pressure thanks to the efforts of literally millions of people.”
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SubscribeAll this, all this, when Hancock is just a common criminal.
Not a common one. Not many manage to damage so many people’s lives, be known and still be able to walk around free. Let’s hope not for much longer.
It wasn’t his ‘resolve’ that stiffened, but his propensity for extramarital liaisons.
Something generally does need to “stiffen” in order to have those relations
What a gaslighter. Confiscate all he owns. Put him in an unheated flat. No visitors. Do not allow him to walk in the sun. Do not allow him to go to church, to work, to the store or the movies. Make him a test subject for any and all pharma experiments.
And Boris Johnson the incompetent architect of the UK’s Covid disaster – not a mention in the article or the comments
Not the most informative Article. Hardly a surprise Hancock responding as he has.
The question remains, what would have happened without Lockdowns and would consequences have been worse than the clear downsides we more fully appreciate now ? It’s a counterfactual we’ll never know for sure, but it’s crucial the Inquiry endeavours to make some conclusions on this that are not just obvious self justification.
My experience of the initial surge is the deathrate would have exploded much more without LD1. I don’t buy it was stabilising already and had plateau’d. Nor that we’d have all acted sensibly voluntarily. The fact folks would then have reacted differently could have generated even more anger, even public disorder, than a blanket rule for all. I think that would also have resulted in alot of NHS staff simply refusing to come to work if large elements of the public were being, what many would have considered, irresponsible. The risk of coming into an environment full of a virus that was killing patients and many staff beyond our powers to initially understand it held because we knew of the public sacrifice too.
Convinced LD1 bought us crucial time. We’d have been completely overwhelmed and thousands, if not more, non Covid emergencies would never have got care or treatment. LD2 more debatable and also by then Govt and rest of us had more time to prepare. And of course we must have better resilience to start with next time. There has been no national increase in intensive care capacity since 2020.
I think that would also have resulted in alot of NHS staff simply refusing to come to work if large elements of the public were being, what many would have considered, irresponsible.
Im assuming you mean hospitals would have been inundated with people arriving at A&E with symptoms. But if the government hadn’t panicked everyone with the idea that “Covid was hunting them down” then they might not have flooded the system with their fears. Poor information, vague facts and outright deception contributed to the fear that lead to the lockdowns to control the panic created by the government. And in fact non Covid emergencies didn’t get the care needed anyway. Cancer treatments were postponed as well as surgery.
You’ve not been looking at the studies then that show lockdowns did not have a limiting effect on covid in the short or medium termYou’ve not even attempted to consciously weigh the medium term impacts on lives, economy and society, cited in this story, of lockdowns, against the supposed benefits. You just make assertions. Fortunately others have done the calculations, and the costs have been horrendous. Improved spelling will assist your arguments.
You might well be making some good points but I wish you’d just write coherently.
165 million people were pushed into $2 a day poverty because of lockdowns. It doesn’t matter if they were all in Asia and Africa. Each and every single nation that participated in lockdowns, contributed to those horrific numbers.
I’m inclined to agree with your view on this. You provide a measured and valid perspective. Uptick from me!
He does? Where? Not here
. I don’t buy it was stabilising already and had plateau’d. Nor that we’d have all acted sensibly voluntarily.
You may not “buy it” but thats t what the data unequivocally stated-even if its not ” your truth!”
So not only is he stupid, he’s proud of his stupidity. Classic Dunning Kruger.
The guy who managed to start a liaison while in lockdown wants to convince us of his moral strength and decision making skills ?
Pathetic little twerp.
Perhaps a little unfair but I can’t help but be reminded of the sub-title to Arendt’s book about Eichmann, The banality of evil.
The problem with lockdown was that those who imposed it did not experience it. Matt Hancock in a third floor flat with two children, attempting to home school using one tablet while also ‘working from home’ would have brought lockdown to an end much faster. Instead he had masses of the attention he clearly craves, while having plenty of human interaction each day. As we subsequently found out.
I’ve met him. He’s a walking talking piece of excrement. I don’t know if he’s technically a sociopath, but there’s definitely something missing.
The fact that jokers like this haven’t been laughed out of the room in all polite society – the fact that a large portion of polite society still insists COVID was handled correctly and “by golly we’ll do it again if we have to” – is one of the clearest pieces of evidence that the ruptures tearing at our social fabric may well be insurmountable.
This isn’t just about sexual orientation and identification. It’s not just about free trade or taxation or the size of government. It’s not just about immigration or free speech. It’s not just about our view of Empire and colonialism. It’s not just about how to deal with Putin and Tehran and Xi.
It’s about everything. That is a terrible thought.
This man told uts that attending Christmas dinner with our families might kill granny. Yet he was quite happy to engage in adulterous sexual relations with his married assistant and then go home to his wife and children while his paramour also went home to her husband and children. Neil Ferguson, although not married, nevertheless carried on an affair with a married woman during lockdown and was quite content to send her home to her husband and children. It is quite clear from this that these spreaders of hysteria and panic did not believe in the fears that they were propagating.
A tale of stupid people trapped in a hall of mirrors.
His answer (at least that part excerpted in this article) shows that he
1) assumes that he could and did control the virus and whether or not there were waves was up to his god-like control
2) there were no downsides to the measures he imposed
Every medical (and public health) decision is at its base a cost-benefit analysis. And he does not correctly calculate either cost or benefit.
For believable Hancock see him eating the cooked a**s of an exotic animal for television.