Gove delivers apology to Covid victims and their families for ‘mistakes made by government’
Gove breaks away from the line of questioning to issue an apology.
I want to take this opportunity, if I may, to apologise to the victims who endured so much pain, the families who’ve endured so much loss, as a result of the mistakes that were made by government in response to the pandemic.
And as a minister, responsible for the Cabinet Office, and who was also close to many of the decisions that were made, I must take my share of responsibility for that.
Politicians are human beings, we’re fallible, we make mistakes and we make errors. And I’m sure that the inquiry will have an opportunity to look in detail at many of the errors I and others made.
But he also says he and his colleagues were trying to take the best decisions “in circumstances where every decision was difficult and every course was bad”.
Key events
Greek government hits back at No 10 over Sunak’s snub, saying he’s ‘annoyed’ because he’s losing argument over marbles
Helena Smith
This morning the Greek government’s spokesman described Rishi Suank’s snub of Kyriakos Mitsotakis as “unprecedented”, with senior officials saying Sunak’s cancellation of the scheduled meeting was tantamount to an own goal.
“We’re talking about a British foul,” said Dimitris Tsiodras who heads the prime ministerial press office. He told Mega TV:
Greece is a proud country, with a long history. Mitsotakis represents this country, this people. You can’t just say ‘look, the meeting isn’t going to happen. See the deputy PM’.
There was no question that Mitsotakis, who has made the marbles repatriation a government priority, would not raise the issue during his visit to London, Tsiodras said. He went on:
The prime minister raises the issue of the marbles’ return at every opportunity, he has raised it in the past, and he raised it on Sunday … it is a well-known Greek position which he has expressed with great clarity … we were clear that the issue of the sculptures would be raised (in talks with Sunak).
In the wake of what Athens has called unseemly behaviour on the part of Sunak, Tsiodras said it was clear the country’s renewed campaign to win back the sculptures had gained momentum and was paying off. He explained:
British public opinion has begun to firmly change (in favour of their return to Athens from the British Museum). Obviously this has annoyed Sunak because when you have a difference of opinion it doesn’t mean you don’t go ahead with a meeting. You have the meeting and exchange opposing views.
Meanwhile the Greek government spokesman, Pavlos Marinakis, told Skai TV that while Athens’ centre right administration did not want to further inflame the issue, Sunak’s snub would not be forgotten. He said:
It is without precedent that a meeting doesn’t happen because of a difference (in opinion).
We don’t want to give the issue further credence … negotiation around the Parthenon marbles is not happening between Greece and the British state but with the British Museum and as such we don’t want it to be seen as a general crisis (in bilateral ties) but … as the negative behaviour of an individual, the British prime minister, about which we have expressed our displeasure.
Keith quotes evidence showing that, in late February, Boris Johnson thought the biggest danger was over-reacting to Covid.
Gove says by early March he thought the biggest danger was under-reacting.
But Johnson was worried about paralysing the economy, he says. He says he wanted to be “absolutely certain it was justified” before taking such a step.
Gove says at the end of February he could give “considerable weight” to what Gove was thinking.
He goes on:
It was only in the succeeding days that I became more and more convinced actually that action was required. And that was partly because of what I had seen happening in Italy, partly also material that had been sent to me by friends outside government that led me to believe action was needed.
The hearing has now stopped for a break until 11.30am.
Gove says it is hard to find people who were arguing for lockdown measures before early March 2020
Keith asks Gove about the plan for Covid in early 2020.
Q: Was it just contain and delay?
Partly, says Gove. But he says the fact that the chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, was a leading epidemiologist was an important help too. And the NHS had stocks of some drugs that might be useful, and PPE.
Q: What debate was there about the need for infection control measures in early February?
Gove says there was a debate about what was happening in Asian countries, including China.
For the UK, lockdown was “an unprecedented departure”, he says.
Normally those infected would be isolated – not the whole population.
He says the government was looking at the emerging evidence.
In early March, the advice was that a lockdown-type policy would have to be introduced with care because the population would not put up with it for long.
Q: So do you accept that, as you debated the possibility of the virus spreading, there was no discussion of infection control? So how were you going to stop the virus spreading?
Gove says he is sure that debate was going on in Sage. He could only rely on the advice given to ministers, and what he read in open source publications. At the time there were not many voices calling for a lockdown. It was only when Italy tried that approach that thinking changed.
He says he searched “in vain” for people well in advance of early March were clear about what was needed.
He says Rory Stewart, the former Tory cabinet minister, was one of the most prescient figures.
Gove tells inquiry ‘significant body of judgment’ thinks Covid virus was man-made
Q: Was trust in the UK’s ability to cope with a pandemic misplaced?
Gove says the UK was not as well placed as it might have been.
He says the virus was novel.
And he says there is “a significant body of judgment that believes that the virus itself was man-made”.
He is referring to the claim that it was manufactured in a Chinese government laboratory. He is suggesting that this might have been something that made the virus particularly hard to deal with.
But it is quite a tangent he has gone down, and it may go further than what ministers have said before about the credibility of the China “laboratory escape” thesis.
Keith quickly closes down this line of argument, saying that “divisive issue” does not fall within the terms of reference of the inquiry.
Keith suggests, if DHSC was struggling to cope, it should have asked for help earlier.
Gove says it was not just the DHSC that had data about the crisis. Others in government should have been in a position to assess the problem, he suggests.
Gove defends Hancock, but says health department was trying to do too much at start of crisis
Keith is now asking about Matt Hancock and the Department of Health and Social Care.
Q: We have heard evidence that between February and May 2020 the DHSC was overwhelmed by the crisis. Do you agree?
Gove says he would put it differently.
He says he has a very high opinion of Sir Chris Wormald, the permanent secretary at DHSC. They worked together at education, he says.
And he says he also has a high opinion of Hancock.
But “too much was asked of DHSC at that point”, he says.
He says they should have realised collectively that this was a “whole-system crisis”.
He says DHSC thought they could handle the crisis. While that spirit was admirable, it would have been better to broaden responsibility earlier, he says.
UPDATE: Gove said:
I have a high opinion of Matt Hancock as a minister.
However, I believe that too much was asked of DHSC (Department of Health and Social Care) at that point.
We should collectively have recognised that this was a health system crisis at an earlier point and taken on to other parts of government the responsibility for delivery that was being asked of DHSC at the time.
Gove tells inquiry he does not accept Dominic Cummings’ aggressive style made No 10 dysfunctional
Keith asks about the comments from Simon Case in WhatsApp exchanges saying he had never seen such a team ill-suited to running the country.
Gove says all Downing Street teams involve people who clash.
Under Boris Johnson there were strong personalities in No 10, he says.
But those strong personalities had not just delivered an election victory; they had broken the logjam over Brexit.
Q: But do you accept those strong personalities had an impact on how No 10 performed.
Gove says you will never get a team “in perfect harmony”. It is in the nature of politics to have strong views.
The question is, does the system tolerate a diversity of views? And does it deliver when a decision has been taken.
(These questions are mostly about Dominic Cummings. Cummings used to work as an adviser for Gove when Gove was education secretary, and for a long time they were close friends.)
Gove says he shares some of Cummings’ concerns about the weaknesses in the way government operates. But he goes on:
But I think that it’s in the nature of anyone who’s a reformer that they will feel the need to test the effectiveness of delivery, and then want to seek to improve it.
He says the Johnson government delivered Brexit well, and delivered the vaccine rollout well.
But in other areas “it would be wrong to award ourselves high marks”, he says.
As an example of how dysfunctional the Cabinet Office was, Michael Gove recalls being asked to make a Commons statement about the departure of the permanent secretary at the Home Office, Philip Rutnam, after a row with Priti Patel, the home secretary. He says that he was only told just before he went into the Commons that Patel was being investigated over an alleged breach of the ministerial code in relation to this. The Cabinet Office’s propriety and ethics team were involved in this, he says. But he says he had not been told.
Gove delivers apology to Covid victims and their families for ‘mistakes made by government’
Gove breaks away from the line of questioning to issue an apology.
I want to take this opportunity, if I may, to apologise to the victims who endured so much pain, the families who’ve endured so much loss, as a result of the mistakes that were made by government in response to the pandemic.
And as a minister, responsible for the Cabinet Office, and who was also close to many of the decisions that were made, I must take my share of responsibility for that.
Politicians are human beings, we’re fallible, we make mistakes and we make errors. And I’m sure that the inquiry will have an opportunity to look in detail at many of the errors I and others made.
But he also says he and his colleagues were trying to take the best decisions “in circumstances where every decision was difficult and every course was bad”.
Gove says Cabinet Office had flawed structure even before Covid started
Keith says the inquiry has heard from several witnesses who have described the Cabinet Office as dysfunctional during Covid.
Q: How did that happen?
Gove says the structure of the Cabinet Office was flawed. Normally a cabinet minister is responsible for what their department does. But that is not the case at the Cabinet Office, he says. Significant parts answer either to the cabinet secretary or to the PM, and not to the lead departmental minister, he says.
Q: So to whom should the inquiry look for accountability as to the state the Cabinet Office was in?
Gove says for many years the Cabinet Office has operated in a way which is “not as effective as it should be”, both in relation to delivering normal government services and and to responding to emergencies.
He says the Cabinet Office ceded too much responsibility to lead government departments, and did not take enough responsibility at the centre.
He also says past prime ministers have given the Cabinet Office responsibility for things that did not fit elsewhere, like drugs policy. He says it became a “Mary Poppins bag” into which PMs will shove things that need to be dealt with by the government’s nanny.
He says, when he became responsible for the Cabinet Office in early 2020, he called for changes to the way it operated.
He says he is not blaming the civil servants, some of whom were among the best. The problem was that it had been given too much to do, and that there was no strategic thinking about how the centre of government should be reconfigured.
Michael Gove gives evidence to Covid inquiry
Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary and former Cabinet Office minister, has just started giving evidence to the Covid inquiry.
He is being questioned by Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel for the inquiry.
The feed is here:
The FT’s George Parker says some Tories think Rishi Sunak cancelled his meeting with Kyriakos Mitsotakis because Mitsotakis met Keir Starmer first.
There’s another slant. A senior Tory tells me Sunak is probably “pissed off” because Mitsotakis met Starmer before him (like Obama meeting Cameron in 2009 to PM Gordon Brown’s fury)
— George Parker (@GeorgeWParker) November 27, 2023
Alex Norris, the shadow policing minsiter, told Sky News this mornng, that, if this was the reason for Sunak’s snub, that was extraordinary. he said:
I thought the logic that we heard overnight that the prime minister didn’t want to discuss that topic, I thought that was pretty thin.
If it’s about that, then I’d be very surprised indeed.
Ultimately, Greece is a huge, important strategic ally of ours on the issue of migration, which of course Rishi Sunak talks about every day. Similarly on the economy, cultural issues, with lots of Greek people who live in this country and vice versa.
So, of course he should be meeting with the prime minister when he’s in this country. I’m very, very surprised that he hasn’t.
Here is Stephen Bush from the FT on the Parthenon marbles row.
This whole argument is daft. No, it is not a gift to Labour that Rishi Sunak cancelled a meeting with the Greek PM. No, Labour has not fallen into a trap by criticising him either. Political debates by and for people who aren’t hit by rising interest rates or NHS waiting times.
This whole argument is daft. No, it is not a gift to Labour that Rishi Sunak cancelled a meeting with the Greek PM. No, Labour has not fallen into a trap by criticising him either. Political debates by and for people who aren’t hit by rising interest rates or NHS waiting times. https://t.co/K4rEOodJKO
— Stephen Bush (@stephenkb) November 27, 2023
According to a report by Steven Swinford and Matt Dathan in the Times, Rishi Sunak has been told that, if he includes an option to disregard the European convention on human rights in the new legislation intended to ensure deportations to Rwanda can go ahead, that will be counterproductive – because it will delay the point at which flights might start. Swinford and Dathan say:
The prime minister held talks on Saturday with James Cleverly, the home secretary; Alex Chalk, the justice secretary; and Victoria Prentis, the attorney general, about the plans for emergency legislation.
Sunak is considering hardline plans to include a “notwithstanding” clause in the legislation to direct British courts to ignore the European convention on human rights (ECHR). However, legal advice drawn up for the meeting warned that this approach risked backfiring because it could lead to further challenges on the basis that Britain is breaching its ECHR obligations …
Three senior government sources told the Times that No 10 is backtracking on opting out of the ECHR. One said: “Everyone wants whatever is going to work and that doesn’t seem to be the full-fat version. We’d be picking a fight when it’s not actually practically useful and we really just want what’s going to get planes off the ground the quickest.”
Greek leader declines meeting with UK deputy PM after Sunak’s snub
Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Greek PM, declined a meeting with the UK deputy prime minster, Oliver Dowden, after it was offered in place of one with Rishi Sunak, Ben Quinn reports.
Here is some more polling on the Parthenon marbles from two years ago.
Rishi Sunak cancels meeting with Greek PM amid Parthenon marbles row
Good morning. Rishi Sunak does not have all the qualities of a great human being but, among other virtues, he is generally calm and polite, and that makes his row with the Greek PM about the Parthenon marbles even harder to comprehend than it otherwise would be.
The official explanation is that Sunak cancelled his meeting with Kyriakos Mitsotakis because Mitsotakis went back on a promise not to raise the issue of the sculptures during his three-day visit to the UK. But did anyone in No 10 seriously think that Mitsotakis would be able to get through media interviews without being asked about the subject?
And so if the pretext for cancelling the meeting was flaky, was this all just some political ruse to present Sunak in a positive light ahead of the election. (One of the problems with political commentary at this stage of the political cycle is that it is assumed that everything is motivated by calculations about electoral positioning. Roughly 80% of the time that’s true, but sometimes it isn’t.)
Some of the briefing from the Tory side backs up this analysis. Keir Starmer met Mitsotakis yesterday and Labour is not opposed to the marbles going back to Greece on loan, and in her London Playbook briefing Rosa Prince quotes a Conservative source as saying:
Starmer sold out to secure a meeting. It’s naive on his part and shows how little regard he has for British taxpayers who have looked after these for generations. Starmer is up to his old tricks of just telling the person in front of him what they want to hear.
Given that polling suggests two-thirds of Britons would support the sculptures going back to Greece as part of a deal that would see Greek artefacts being loaned to British museums in exchange, it is hard to see Sunak’s move as a great vote-winner. But James Johnson, a pollster who used to work in No 10 for Theresa May, says it is not obviously a mistake. He posted this on X last night.
oh incredibly niche. i don’t think it moves the dial at all. but i don’t think it’s a political error. PM needs as many opportunities as possible to try and look strong/patriotic vis-a-vis Starmer
— James Johnson (@jamesjohnson252) November 27, 2023
Perhaps the worst take on this whole affair came this morning from Mark Harper, the transport secretary. In an interview on Sky News this morning, he claimed that Sunak’s decision to cancel the meeting was not a snub. Asked if it was a snub, he replied:
The prime minister wasn’t able to meet the Greek prime minister. He was offered a meeting with the deputy prime minister, which proved not to be possible for him to take up. So, I don’t think I’d characterise it the way you have.
Discussions continue between our governments about important matters.
Here is Helena Smith’s story about the row.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.
10am: Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary and Cabinet Office minister during the pandemic, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry.
Morning: David Cameron, the new foreign secretary, attends a meeting of Nato foreign ministers in Brussels.
10.15am: Richard Hughes, chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, and colleagues give evidence to the Commons Treasury committee about the autumn statement.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
After 12.30pm: MPs debate the second reading of the criminal justice bill.
Afternoon: Prof Dame Jenny Harries, the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry.
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