Lack of ICU capacity was ‘political choice’, Chris Whitty tells Covid inquiry – as it happened | Politics

Key events

Afternoon summary

Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, has told the Covid inquiry that Britain went into the pandemic with “very low” intensive care capacity compared with other wealthy countries and that this was “a political choice”. (See 12.35pm.)

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Today the House of Commons Library has published its final, most comprehensive analysis of the general election results. If you have any political geek tendencies, it’s a must read.

At the election 263 of the MPs elected (40%) were women – the highest number and proportion ever. This chart is good on which of the parties were best and worst in terms of the proportion of candidates who were female.

And this chart is interesting too, showing, among other things, that more than half of Labour MPs are newly-elected, and that the Lib Dems have more women MPs than the Tories do.

If you enjoy data like this, there are 128 pages of it here.

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At a meeeting at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, John Healey, the defence secretary, renewed the Aukus submarine defence pact partnership with his Australian and US counterparts. They agreed an updated Aukus statement. According to an MoD news release, it means:

Hundreds of Australian defence and civilian personnel will be upskilled in nuclear reactor expertise in 2025 by specialist Royal Navy engineers. The first such course concluded earlier this month, with 250 personnel learning the skills necessary to own, operate, maintain, sustain and regulate a nuclear-powered submarine.

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Whitty says NHS should have done more to say hospitals still open for non-Covid emergencies during pandemic

The NHS should have done more to encourage people with serious, non-Covid illnesses to keep going to hospital during the pandemic, Prof Sir Chris Whitty told the Covid inquiry today.

The chief medical officer for England said there was never going to a “perfect balance” between asking people to stay away if possible, so as not to overburden the NHS, and persuading them that they should still go to hospital if seriously ill.

But he said he felt the point that non-Covid patients in need of treatment should still go to hospital in an emergency could have been stressed more.

He told the inquiry:

I am confident what we didn’t do, was to identify over and over again – you couldn’t say it too often – that the NHS is open, in particular if it’s an urgent and emergency life threatening situation, you must go to hospital, as you usually would.

And there is reasonable evidence, in my view, for example, that the number of people who came into hospital with heart attacks was lower than you’d predict, I don’t anticipate there’s any reason that had been fewer. So some of those people were staying at home, who otherwise would not have done, and they would have had remediable conditions.

“So the bit of it, which is, did we get it across that people should still go to hospital? I think we didn’t get it across well enough.

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Two Scottish pensioners launch legal challenge to try to block winter fuel payment cut

Two pensioners are seeking to take the Scottish and UK governments to court over the cut to the winter fuel payment, PA Media reports. PA says:

Peter and Florence Fanning, of Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, have raised proceedings with the help of the Govan Law Centre against the Scottish government and the UK work and pensions secretary over the policy.

The judicial review – which has been raised at the court of session – now requires a judge’s approval to move to a hearing on the merits, with the Govan Law Centre seeking to expedite both the case and its application for legal aid to ensure a decision can be handed down before the winter.

The case asks the court to rule on whether the decision was unlawful, which would then allow the petitioners to ask the court to, in effect, set aside the policy and restore the winter fuel payment to all.

The case’s argument rests on the accusation both governments failed to adequately consult with those of pension age on the change and did not release an equality impact assessment on the changes.

A freedom of information request revealed an abridged version of such an assessment had been carried out by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), with the UK government arguing a full study was not required.

Former first minister and current Alba party leader Alex Salmond was instrumental in putting the Fannings in touch with the Govan Law Centre ahead of the action being raised.

Speaking at the press conference on Thursday, Salmond said every person in Scotland “should be grateful” to the Fannings for raising the action, which he said should have been taken forward by the Scottish government in the first instance.

Rachel Moon, the instructing solicitor and a partner at Govan Law Centre, said: “Quite simply, (government) should have considered this rigorously. This policy and the decisions taken affect those with protected characteristics, including age and disability, and it affects 10 million people.”

While campaigning organisations regularly try to challenge government decisions in court in this way, it is unusual for them to succeed, particularly if they are trying to overturn big fiscal decisions. Governments regularly announce changes to tax and welfare policy with minimal consultation.

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Doctor in tears at Covid inquiry says what NHS staff saw was ‘indescribable’

Before Prof Sir Chris Whitty started giving evidence, the Covid inquiry heard evidence from Prof Kevin Fong, a former clinical adviser in emergency preparedness, resilience and response at NHS England. As Andrew Gregory reports, Fong said dealing with the Covid crisis was, for NHS staff, like having to respond to a “terrorist attack every day”, with infected patients “raining from the sky”.

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Keir Starmer told US business leaders at a breakfast meeting in New York today that he wanted to “turbocharge” the economy.

After saying that discussions with business helped shaped Labour’s policies, he said:

Because if we can get into the question of what works, what doesn’t work, how to get the economy to really turbocharge, what are the ambitions for investment, that really helps us shape our working.

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Whitty says it’s arguable health chiefs overstated risks from Covid at start of pandemic

Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, is still giving evidence to the Covid inquiry about the pandemic’s impact on the NHS. Here are some more lines that have emerged.

Whitty said it was arguable that health chiefs overstated the risk from Covid at the start of the pandemic, rather than understated it. Asked if the government should have placed more emphasis on the risk from long Covid at the start, he said:

I worried at the beginning – I still worry, actually, in retrospect – about did we get the level of concern right? Were we either over pitching it so that people were incredibly afraid of something where, in fact, their actuarial risk was low or were we not pitching it enough, and therefore people didn’t realise the risk they were walking into? I think that balance is really hard.

And arguably some people would say we, if anything, overdid it, rather than under at the beginning. So I’m not certain loading an additional risk on would in itself be useful.

I think we probably should have been swifter off the mark in spotting long Covid as it emerged, although I think we were relatively quick and it wasn’t obvious, we could have done something different as a result.

The main thing we could do at the beginning, before we understood it slightly better, was to reduce the amount of Covid. If you don’t get Covid, you don’t get long Covid.

He criticised a tweet by the World Health Organisation (WHO) from March 28 2020, which said: “#COVID19 is NOT airborne.” Asked about this, he said:

I think what was wrong about this was the degree of definitiveness that was put into this tweet ..

I don’t actually think tweeting is a very good medium for trying to put forward really difficult science.

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Hunt says, if Reeves changes fiscal rules to allow more borrowing, interest rates will stay higher for longer

Jeremy Hunt, the Tory former chancellor, has said that Treasury officials always told him that higher borrowing would lead to interest rates staying higher for longer. He posted this on social media, in response to reports that Rachel Reeves is considering changing the way debt is defined in her fiscal rules to allow more borrowing.

With all the discussion about Labour changing the fiscal rules to borrow billions more money (so much for ‘fully funded’ commitments), it’s worth noting that the Chancellor explicitly ruled out doing so last year. My advice from HMT officials was always very clear on this: more borrowing means interest rates stay higher for longer.

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Severin Carrell

The information commissioner is investigating an alleged data breach involving WhatsApp messages held by one of Scotland’s most senior civil servants.

Unredacted messages held by Alyson Stafford, the Scottish government’s director general for Scottish exchequer, were sent by government officials to a mental health campaigner with the names and numbers of junior officials fully visible.

Peter Todd, a campaigner based in northern Scotland who received Stafford’s messages last week using freedom of information legislation, has complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which investigates data breaches.

He said the messages, written to and from Stafford at the height of the Covid crisis, included confidential conversations, gossip and information about the government’s finances during the pandemic which should have been redacted.

The ICO confirmed it was assessing Todd’s complaint.

The Scottish government said it had alerted the officials affected, and took the “accidental release” very seriously.

However, it is understood it does not believe the data breach is significant enough to require it to notify the ICO. Scottish government officials told Todd they were “content that we handling it in line with our statutory duties.”

Todd said the unredacted names, phone numbers and messages were sent to him by officials in a bundle of documents, most of which had been carefully redacted.

The visible names, numbers and messages came to him highlighted in yellow, as were notes alongside them on which parts of Scotland’s freedom of information act required their redaction.

He was angry about the data breach because he believes his medical information had been mishandled by the NHS on earlier occasions, and that insufficient care is taken by public bodies.

“The Scottish government should have strong procedures in place to prevent glaring data protection errors like this happening,” he said. “I trust all those affected are being swiftly informed.”

A Scottish government spokesperson said: “We are aware that some information intended for redaction was released in error in response to a freedom of information request and those affected are being made aware.

“Any accidental release of information is treated very seriously and is subject to review so that appropriate action can be taken to prevent future incidents.”

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Campaigners says latest figures show road death figures for 2023 still ‘unacceptably high’

Road deaths in Britain remain “unacceptably high”, campaigners said today.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) was commenting after the Department for Transport published road casualty figures for Britain in 2023.

James Broun, research manager at RoSPA, said:

While we’re pleased to see road fatalities fall by 5% on 2022, sadly 1,624 people still died on the roads last year – an unacceptably high figure following years of stagnation in fatality reduction. We are particularly concerned that when we include the number of people seriously injured on the roads, the overall figure (29,711) has shown virtually no improvement over the last year.

It’s important to put this into context. Although it’s good to see that road fatalities have decreased by 9% over the past decade, this is a marked slowdown compared to the 47% reduction achieved in the previous ten years. Taking a longer view, it’s clear that without a comprehensive road safety strategy in place, momentum has been lost.

RoSPA also said the figures for 2023 showed pedestrian fatalities up 5% on the year before.

Here are the road death figures for 2023.

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Knife crime in England and Wales rose by 4% in year ending March 2024, ONS says

Knife crime rose 4% in England and Wales in the year ending March 2024, according to a report from the Office for National Statistics today.

The ONS says:

Offences involving knives or sharp instruments recorded by the police rose by 4% (50,010 offences) in YE [year ending] March 2024, compared with the previous year (48,409 offences). Of these offences, 22,167 (44%) were for assault with injury, or assault with intent to cause serious harm, and 21,226 (42%) were used in a robbery. These figures exclude the Greater Manchester Police.

These knife crime statistics come from recorded crime figures – police records from when a crime is reported.

The ONS report also covers figures from the crime survey, which measures crime rates by asking people about their experience of crime (whether or not it was reported to the police), and it says that, on his measure, the overall rate of violent crime was about the same in the year ending March 2024 as in the year before. It says:

In YE March 2024, approximately 0.5% of people aged 16 years and over experienced violence with or without injury where the perpetrator was an acquaintance, and 0.7% experienced this where the perpetrator was a stranger. There were no statistically significant changes, compared with YE March 2023.

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