Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was quoted as saying the government should “just let people die” during the COVID-19 pandemic rather than impose a second national lockdown, an inquiry into how Britain handled the crisis said on Monday is.
Great Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (AFP) {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}} {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}}
Patrick Vallance, who was the government’s chief scientific adviser during the COVID crisis, recorded in his diary a meeting between then Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on October 25, 2020.
The diary entry presented to the inquiry documented how Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s most senior adviser during the pandemic, told Vallance what he allegedly heard at the meeting.
Vallance quoted Cummings in his diary as saying: “Rishi says you just let people die and that’s fine. This all feels like a complete lack of leadership.”
A spokesman for Sunak said the prime minister would state his position when providing evidence to the inquiry “rather than answering each individual question piecemeal”.
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The inquiry is examining the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has brought large parts of the UK economy to a standstill and killed more than 220,000 people. It is scheduled to run until summer 2026.
Senior government officials have repeatedly said the government was unprepared for the pandemic and that a “toxic” and “macho” culture was hampering the response to the health crisis.
The danger for Sunak is that the evidence at the inquiry will undermine his attempt to portray himself as a replacement for Johnson’s chaotic leadership, despite being one of that government’s most senior ministers.
Previous evidence has shown that in the summer of 2020 he was criticized by a government scientific adviser over his “Eat Out to Help out” policy, which subsidized meals in pubs and restaurants, by health experts over the spread of the virus, as “Dr. Death” was branded.
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