Rishi Sunak starts Covid inquiry evidence saying how sorry he is to people who lost loved ones – UK politics live | Politics

Q: Did you think cabinet was being sidelined, as some witnesses have said.

Sunak says this is not his “strong recollection”.

He says he was always able to give the PM advice.

And he says the Covid-O and Covid-S system Boris Johnson set up – two cabinet committees, one dealing with operations, and another with strategy – made sense for Covid decision making.

He suggests the lock of a Covid taskforce at the start was a problem. But that was introduced.

And he says this is a model that can be deployed again “off the shelf”.

Q: And did you have a view as to how the Cabinet Office was performing was at the start?

Sunak says those first few weeks were very difficult. He says people were doing the best they could. But, once the taskforce was in place, things worked better, he says.

He says there are claims that decisions were not made in the right place. But his “strong recollection” is that they were. The Covid-O and Covid-S system worked well, he says.

Sunak says the PM had to balance competing interests during Covid.

Only he could do that, because only he saw all the competing arguments made by different cabinet ministers.

Q: Did you see it as your job to promote the Treasury’s concerns about the economy? Or did you take a view as to what the ultimate decision should be?

Sunak says it is difficult to generalise. It depends what the meeting was considering.

It would be “context-specific”, he says.

But his primary responsibility was to feed in information about the economic advice.

If the PM asked him for a general view, he would give it.

Q: And was the PM the ultimate decision maker. A lot of your advice just went to him.

Sunak says the PM was the ultimate decision maker. That is not particularly controversial, he says.

Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel for the inquiry, is questioning Sunak.

He starts by saying Sunak, in his witness statement, says he does not use text messages or WhatsApp messages much.

Your phone, you said, doesn’t retain, and nor do you have access to, text messages at all relating to the period of the crisis.

In addition, you said although on occasion you use WhatsApp to communicate around meetings and logistics and so on, you generally were only party to WhatsApp groups that were set up to deal with individual circumstances such as arrangements for calls, meetings and so on and so forth. You don’t now have access to any of the WhatsApps that you did send during the time of the crisis, do you?

Sunak confirms that. He says:

I’ve changed my phone multiple times over the past few years and, as that has happened, the messages have not come across.

As you said, I’m not a prolific user of WhatsApp in the first instance – primarily communication with my private office and obviously anything that was of significance through those conversations or exchanges would have been recorded officially by my civil servants as one would expect.

Rishi Sunak is giving evidence now.

He starts by saing how sorry he is to all of who lost loves ones, and who suffered during the pandemic.

UPDATE: Sunak said:

I just wanted to start by saying how deeply sorry I am to all of those who lost loved ones, family members, through the pandemic, and also all those who suffered in various different ways throughout the pandemic and as a result of the actions that were taken.

I’ve thought a lot about this over the past couple of years. It’s important that we learn the lessons so that we can be better prepared in the future. It’s in that spirit and with enormous respect for all of those who are affected that I’m here today.

I look forward to giving evidence in the spirit of constructive candour to help the inquiry with its deliberations.

The Covid inquiry has been getting a lot of criticism in the media in recent days, particularly from newspapers that have been critical of lockdown and supportive of Boris Johnson.

Mostly the government has not commented on how the inquiry is proceeding. On Any Questions at the weekend Esther McVey, the rightwing Cabinet Office minister dubbed “minister for common sense” when she was appointed, did suggest that lockdown had been a mistake. She told the programme:

I’ve been perturbed with the inquiry, that it seems one dimensional at the moment. However, it is an independent inquiry and it has got some time to run.

I do hope it asks the questions about the damage of lockdown, about why was no modelling done, that instead of going into lockdown we could have given advice to the public and how they would have reacted. Actually most of us are have got, I’m going to use the word common sense, and we would have protected the vulnerable, we would have looked after our own, we would have taken care and advice.

McVey also said that, as a backbencher, she has voted against lockdown.

Ever since he gave up leadership of the Brexit party, and let Richard Tice lead it under its new name, Reform UK, Nigel Farage has liked nothing more than teasing the media with hints about a possible comeback. He was at it again this morning, in an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain after finishing third in I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!

Farage was asked if he wanted to rejoin the Conservative party, which he used to belong to until he left to help set up Ukip in the 1990s. He replied:

I am looking at a Conservative government that is in total shambles, facing tomorrow effectively a confidence vote on an issue that affects every single living human being in our country, namely immigration on a level that never happened even during Tony Blair’s days.

Rishi [Sunak] is a lame duck walking. The Conservative party are headed for total defeat. As to whether I have a future in politics, I have no idea at this moment in time.

But what I would say is never say never. And our country needs, actually, people at the top with some firm guidance as to where we’re going in the future. At the moment we are rudderless and I don’t see a Labour party with strength to get us out of this mess.

Good morning. Rishi Sunak is in “facing his worst week as prime minister” territory. All prime ministers have weeks that are described by the media as their most difficult yet, and this does not necessarily mean all his lost. Tony Blair was regularly having “worst weeks yet” throughout his entire 10-year premiership. But Sunak really is in a dire state. He is facing near-certain electoral defeat at some point in the next 13 months and now, for the first time since he became leader, there is real speculation about some sort of leadership challenge. In what will be seen by many non-Tories as a sign that the party is flirting with insanity, there has even been talk of a Boris Johnson comeback.

Sunak faces two particular challenges today. First, he is spending most of the day at the Covid inquiry, where he is likely to face questions about his lockdown-sceptical stance as chancellor that led him to be nicknamed “Dr Death” by Prof Dame Angela McLean, who is now the government’s chief scientific adviser (presumably that did not come up at her interview). Sunak will also be asked about his “eat out to help out” scheme. Tom Ambrose has a preview here.

But, more importantly, two groups of Conservative MPs will meet to decide their stance on the new Rwanda deportation bill that is getting its second reading in the Commons. This is the issue that is creating a division in the party deep enough to pose an existential threat to Sunak’s premiership. It seems likely the bill will pass tomorrow, but only because Tory MPs will put off the key fight until report stage after Christmas, when rightwingers will try to amend it in one direction, centrists will try yanking it in the opposite direction, and at that point there might be no bill left the party can unite around.

Even if the bill survives the Commons, it is bound to face challenge in the House of Lords. But perhaps the biggest danger of all for Sunak is that the bill does become law – only for it to fail to totally to “stop the boats” because of ongoing legal challenges (which is what his critics are saying is bound to happen). Rowena Mason has the latest on this here.

Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, was doing a media round this morning. He defended the bill, claiming that it would stop 99.5% of appeals against deportation. He told Times Radio:

I think my simple message is this plan is working, let’s unite behind it and get this further legislation through.

This legislation, by the way, based on Home Office calculations means that of the cases which currently allow people to appeal, that only about one out of 200 cases ultimately would be able to get through that appeal. So this is a very significant, even dramatic move, designed to make the Rwanda route work.

Shapps was referring to Home Office modelling leaked to the Times. In his story Matt Dathan says:

The Home Office believes 99.5% of individual legal challenges submitted by migrants will fail to block their deportation to Rwanda under Rishi Sunak’s emergency law, leaked documents reveal.

Modelling prepared by officials to assess the risk of individual legal challenges scuppering Rishi Sunak’s emergency Rwanda bill predicts nine in ten of all claims would be rejected with no right of appeal within ten days of their arrival in the UK …

The department believes that of the 10% that are granted a hearing, 90% will be struck out at the second stage of the legal process. Only half of the remaining cases that are allowed to progress to an upper tribunal appeal would succeed and lead to the migrant remaining in the UK, according to the Home Office modelling.

It means that if 1,000 migrants were to lodge individual legal challenges against their removal, 900 would be rejected at the first stage and only five migrants would ultimately succeed in blocking their deportation.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10.30am: Rishi Sunak starts giving evidence to the Covid inquiry. He is due to give evidence all day.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Noon: Sir Bill Cash briefs members of the European Research Group and other rightwing Conservative groups in parliament on the findings of the ERG’s legal “star chamber” on the viability of the Rwanda bill.

1.30pm: Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, holds talks with the main parties in Northern Ireland on efforts to resume power sharing at Stormont.

3pm: Sir Matthew Rycroft, permanent secretary at the Home Office, gives evidence to the Commons public accounts committee about the Rwanda deportation policy.

6pm: The Conservative One Nation Caucus meets to consider its stance on the Rwanda bill.

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