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Gove rejects suggestion that disabled people not prioritised for support during pandemic – as it happened | Politics
Gove rejects suggestion that disabled people not prioritised for support during pandemic
Before he finished giving evidence, Michael Gove was questioned by Danny Friedman KC, counsel for four organisations representing disabled people.
Friedman asked Gove about a government document saying the Covid-O committee had agreed on 29 October 2020 to work on measures to protect people who were disproportionately at risk because of their ethnicity. The minute also says Boris Johnson had asked officials to prepare “in slower time” a more ambitious package to protect people with disabilities.
Friedman asked Gove to explain why disabled people were deemed a lower priority.
Gove said he thought the phrase “in slower time” referred to the fact that preparing those measures was going to take more time. He said this does not mean the disabled were a lower priority. People involved in the decision making did not feel like that, he said.
Key events
Afternoon summary
No 10 plays down hint from Jenrick that his plan to cut immigration is being blocked
In the Commons, in response to the urgent question on migration figures, Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, was asked when the government’s plan to cut immigration would be announced. He replied:
My plan would have been brought to the House before last Christmas if I could have done.
It has been reported that Jenrick has his own plan which he has presented to No 10.
Asked if Jenrick’s comment meant No 10 had blocked a plan he had proposed, a No 10 spokesperson told the afternoon lobby briefing:
I don’t know what specifically he is referring to. It’s not unusual for policy to be discussed in the normal way between departments, I’m sure this was no different.
O’Connor asks about another statement by Harries at a press conference in March 2020. She was asked about the WHO advocating widespread testing, and she implied that was not advice that covered the UK.
Harries says her statement was misinterpreted. Many countries had not found any Covid cases, and that is why the WHO was encouraging them to test. She backed that, she says.
But, she says, the problem in the UK was that they had been testing, and that they were running out of tests.
O’Connor is now asking Harries to defend a statement she made at a press conference in April 2020 saying the UK was an international exemplar in terms of pandemic preparedness.
Harries defends the statement, saying she was referring to a previous assessment of the UK’s position. She says when she said “regardless of the position we may be in now”, she was acknowledging that things had changed.
O’Connor says that, at a press conference in March 2020, Harries said that the problems with PPE had been sorted out. He asks her to accept this was wrong.
Harries says she was not responsible for PPE. She says, at the press conferences, she had to rely on what she had been told. She says she apologised for getting that wrong when she next attended a press conference. To apologise like that was unusual, she says.
At the Covid inquiry Prof Dame Jenny Harries, the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, is being questioned by Andrew O’Connor, counsel for the inquiry.
O’Connor puts it to Harries that, as the pandemic was taking off, she was one of the scientists who argued the case that it would be a mistake to introduce lockdown measures too early because people would get tired of complying. He says Prof Sir Chris Whitty has accepted that he was wrong in what he said about this, and he asks Harries why she has not accepted that she was at fault.
Harries is reluctant to accept that she was wrong in what she said. But eventually she said, if she “miscommunicated”, that would be an opportunity to learn.
Gove rejects suggestion that disabled people not prioritised for support during pandemic
Before he finished giving evidence, Michael Gove was questioned by Danny Friedman KC, counsel for four organisations representing disabled people.
Friedman asked Gove about a government document saying the Covid-O committee had agreed on 29 October 2020 to work on measures to protect people who were disproportionately at risk because of their ethnicity. The minute also says Boris Johnson had asked officials to prepare “in slower time” a more ambitious package to protect people with disabilities.
Friedman asked Gove to explain why disabled people were deemed a lower priority.
Gove said he thought the phrase “in slower time” referred to the fact that preparing those measures was going to take more time. He said this does not mean the disabled were a lower priority. People involved in the decision making did not feel like that, he said.
Lisa O’Carroll
David Cameron is in Brussels for his first big meeting in the city since losing his premiership over Brexit in 2016.
The new foreign secretary was in the EU capital for a summit of Nato foreign ministers but snuck into the HQ after most of the cameras and British press had disappeared. However, he did join other foreign ministers for the traditional “family photo”.
He will be in Brussels for a second day of the Nato meeting tomorrow.
Lady Hallett says she does not have ‘settled views’ on what Covid inquiry will conclude yet
Michael Gove has now finished his evidence. Just before he left, Lady Hallett, the inquiry chair, said she wanted to respond to something Gove said earlier and she said he was wrong to suggest the line of questioning from Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel to the inquiry, gave some indication as to what her conclusions would be. She said:
I don’t have any settled views as yet … I will not reach any conclusion until I have considered all the evidence.
She said she would be considering all the evidence, and that what came out in the oral hearings was only part of that. She would not just be focusing on WhatsApp messages, she said.
She said counsel was not putting forward personal views. If questions implied a personal view, that was only because they were designed to “test the evidence robustly”, she said.
And she said that, even if counsel had a view, that would not be relevant because the inquiry’s conclusions would reflect what she decided.
Gove welcomed the clarification.
UK ministers made ‘little attempt’ to explain whether Covid measures were UK-wide or England-only, inquiry hears
Mitchell also showed the inquiry an extract from an expert analysis submitted to the inquiry, compiled by Ailsa Henderson, assessing the speeches given by UK ministers in 2020. She says there was “little attempt” to explain when rules applied across the whole of the UK and when they were England-only.
Gove does not accept this was a significant problem. He claims people had a “pretty clear understanding” of the different responsibilities of the different governments. And he says if the complaint just consists of “someone mixing up the phrase English and British” at certain points, that does not really prove that the UK government was being high-handed.
Gove defends Cabinet Office wanting to use Covid messaging to highlight benefits of UK union
At the inquiry Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary and former Cabinet Office minister, is being questioned by Claire Mitchell KC on behalf of Scottish Covid Bereaved.
Mitchell says Gove accused the SNP government earlier of trying to exploit Covid at certain points for party political purposes. But she brings up a document written by Gove’s team in the Cabinet Office which talks about highlighting the benefits of the union. She suggests this shows it was the UK government that was trying to politicise the crisis.
Gove rejects this. He says he just wanted to stress the facts. He says it was a fact that furlough was generous, a fact that the devolved administrations got extra money via the Barnett formula and a fact that the vaccine rollout was more effective because it was UK-wide.
Dominic Cummings joked about trip to countryside before Barnard Castle visit
Dominic Cummings joked in a private message about taking his family to the countryside in March 2020, about a fortnight before he infamously did just that in apparent breach of lockdown laws, Peter Walker reports. The message was presented at the inquiry earlier (see 12pm), but this particular message was not singled out for comment. Here is Peter’s story.
Back at the Covid inquiry, Michael Gove is now being questioned by Kirsten Heaven, counsel for Covid Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru.
Heaven asks about a comment from Boris Johnson in his witness statement where Johnson said it was “optically wrong” for the PM to be meeting the first ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as if they were equals.
Gove says Johnson was not just arguing that it was optically wrong. He says Johnson had a more fundamental objection to decisions being taken like that.
Jenrick confirms government considering caps as part of ‘package of fundamental reforms’ to bring down immigration
Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, told MPs earlier that the government would bring in “a serious package of fundamental reforms” to bring down immigration. He made the comment as he responded to an urgent question tabled by Labour about last week’s migration figures.
During the UQ, in which Jenrick faced fierce criticism from some Tory MPs over the level of net migration, the minister said:
We believe that the number of people coming into this country is too high, that it is placing unbearable pressure on our public services and on housing, that it is making it impossible to integrate people into this country and is harming community cohesion and national unity.
It is also a moral failure because it’s leaving people on welfare and enabling companies to reach all too often for the easy lever of foreign labour.
For all those reasons, we are determined to tackle this issue. We understand the concerns of the British public and I’m here to say that we share them, and that we are going to bring forward a serious package of fundamental reforms to address this issue once and for all.
Asked if the government would a cap on overall migration numbers, Jenrick replied:
There are definitely strong arguments for using caps, whether in general or on specific visas, but these are conversations that we need to conclude within government.
And asked if the government intended to restrict the ability of people with visas to bring dependants with them, Jenrick confirmed this was being considered. He said:
It’s certainly true that there has been a very, very substantial number of dependants coming into the UK alongside visa holders, whether that be students, care workers or skilled workers, and it is a choice for the country as to whether we want to continue to pursue that.
There is a strong argument for saying that it is unsustainable for the country to continue to take so many dependants who, in turn, put pressure on housing, public services, school places and so on.
And there are different models on which we could base our visa system which did not enable so many dependants to come into the country.
Jenrick said this was a particular issue for people coming to the UK with care worker visas. They were bringing dependants with them “almost one-for-one”, he said.
