Key events
Hancock says, as health secretary, he covered many areas of importance. He says he would not say the NHS was the most important.
Preparing for emergencies was part of the job, he says.
Q: Were risks prioritised?
Of course, says Hancock. That is vital.
And he says, in a system like the health service, things have to be dealt with at the right level. Not everything can go to the secretary of state.
He says the risk of a flu pandemic was a tier 1 risk. He was warned about this on his first day in office. The briefing covered pandemic flu, and other pandemics.
He says on day one he asked for more information about preparedness.
That was because he knew the importance of being prepared. Before he went into politics, when he worked at the Bank of England, he had experience of dealing with an emergency.
Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel for the inquiry, is questioning Matt Hancock.
Keith starts by saying Hancock was paymaster general and minister for the Cabinet Office between 2015 and 2016. He says that, in that capacity, Hancock was in charge of the national risk register.
Hancock confirms that. But he says he was the junior minister. Oliver Letwin, his boss, was in charge, he says.
Keith starts by stressing that today he will be asking about events that happened pre-pandemic. He is focusing on emergency preparations.
So he will not be asking about matters like lockdown, or PPE. Those issues will be covered in later modules, particularly in module 2, which will run in the autumn, he says.
Matt Hancock gives evidence to the Covid inquiry
Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, is about to start giving evidence to the Covid inquiry. He is the only witness scheduled for this morning, and so the hearing could run until about 1pm.
At this stage the inquiry is just looking at how prepared the UK was for a pandemic, and so the evidence will focus on events before 2020. Hancock became health secretary in 2018.
We will have a live feed at the top of the blog.
Caroline Nokes, the Tory chair of the women and equalities committee, has been giving interviews about its report this morning. (See 9.13am.) Asked about the Home Office’s economic impact assessment of its illegal migration bill, she said it showed why the plan to deport migrants to Rwanda was “very difficult to justify”.
Asked if the Rwanda policy represented value for money for the taxpayer, she told Sky News:
No, I don’t think it does. I have always been concerned that the Rwanda scheme is not only very difficult to justify – why we should be sending asylum seekers to Rwanda to be processed within the Rwandan asylum system, when actually we should have better systems here?
But the value for money question is a perfectly valid and legitimate one.
And it’s worrying when the Home Office themselves can’t be certain that these figures are accurate, and they’re more predicated on the Rwandan scheme acting more as a deterrent and, to date, we’ve not seen it act as a deterrent.
The Home Office has said it would only send unaccompanied child migrants to a third country in “very limited circumstances”. Responding to today’s report from the women and equalities committee (see 9.13am), a Home Office spokesperson said:
Through the illegal migration bill, we will stop the boats by detaining those who come to the UK illegally and swiftly returning them to a safe third country or their home country.
It is only right that we protect the most vulnerable by not creating incentives for criminal gangs to target specific groups.
We have amended the bill to make clear that an unaccompanied child under 18 can only be removed in very limited circumstances. Where a removal decision is made, detention will be for the shortest possible time with necessary support provisions in place.
Home Office should rule out sending migrant children to Rwanda, says Tory-dominated Commons committee
Good morning. The illegal migration bill, and the government’s policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda (which the bill supports), is facing fresh criticism this morning. As Rajeev Syal reports, yesterday the Home Office published a report suggesting that, instead of sending people to Rwanda, it might be cheaper for the taxpayer to just let them stay.
While the row about those conclusions continues, the Commons women and equalities committee has published a report saying that vulnerable people are particularly at risk from the government’s bill.
The committee, which has a Conservative majority, says:
The Nationality and Borders Act and illegal migration bill risk turning back the clock on policies intended to ensure immigration detention is used only as a last resort, and to reduce the risks of harm to vulnerable people. The government must set out how it intends to mitigate risks to vulnerable adults …
A significant number of vulnerable people, to whom the removal process would very likely be harmful, have received notices of the Home Office’s intention to remove them to Rwanda. Notices of intent should be suspended, and no new notices issued until all legal challenges to the policy are complete.
In particular, the committee says the government should rule out deporting migrant children to Rwanda. It says:
The risks of harm to children arising from the removal process outweigh any risks of damaging the intended deterrent effect of the policy – the government should abandon any intention of forcibly removing children to Rwanda.
Commenting on the report, Caroline Nokes, the Tory MP who chairs the committee, said in a statement:
This inquiry took place in the context of an asylum system under immense strain, with increasing numbers of claims and a staggering increase in the backlog of people waiting for a decision on their case.
We set out to understand the fairness of the UK asylum process, looking specifically through the lens of the UK Equality Act at the treatment of those with vulnerabilities arising from their protected characteristics.
We were disturbed by the Home Office’s inadequate management of risks of harm to asylum seekers with protected characteristics, including women, LGBT people, children and disabled people. Alarmingly, these risks will increase under the Government’s recent and planned reforms.
One of our biggest concerns is the treatment of children within the asylum system. Any intention to detain child asylum seekers under the Illegal Migration Bill and forcibly remove them to Rwanda must be abandoned. The risk of harm to children outweighs any perceived damage to the effectiveness of the Government’s policy agenda.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: Keir Starmer takes part in a Q&A at a New Statesman conference.
Morning: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.
10am: Matt Hancock, health secretary from 2018 to 2021, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry.
10.10am: Executives from Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons and Tesco give evidence to the Commons business committee about food price inflation.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
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