Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is braced for a testing cross-examination on Monday when he makes his first appearance before the UK’s official inquiry into the coronavirus pandemic.
The inquiry has heard damning testimonies in recent weeks, which have exposed chaos at the heart of the government as it struggled to respond to the rapid spread of the disease from early 2020.
Much of the focus has been on the competence of Boris Johnson, the then-prime minister who gave evidence last week. But Sunak’s role as chancellor at the time and in particular the impact of his flagship Eat Out to Help Out discount scheme on transmission rates as the UK emerged from its first lockdown has increasingly come under scrutiny in recent weeks.
The scheme, which was designed to boost the hospitality industry by encouraging cautious consumers to venture out after months of staying away from restaurants and pubs, has been partly blamed for triggering a new wave of the virus.
The inquiry has heard how senior scientific advisers were not consulted before the Treasury launched the scheme in August 2020, leading some to privately refer to the then-chancellor as “Dr Death”.
Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s former chief scientific adviser, told the inquiry he would be “very surprised” if any minister had not understood the “risk” of the scheme increasing transmission rates, adding that it was “highly likely” to have increased the number of deaths.
Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer since 2019, privately characterised Sunak’s programme as “Eat Out to Help Out the Virus”, the inquiry has heard.
“There was no consultation,” Whitty told the inquiry. “I made fairly firmly to Number 10 — not to the prime minister — the view that it would have been prudent, let’s put it that way, for them to have thought about discussing it before it was launched.”
The inquiry, which is examining the government’s response to the virus and is due to run until the summer of 2026, has also been shown evidence that Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, was privately critical of the scheme at the time.
In a message to Sir Mark Sedwill, cabinet secretary between 2018 and 2020, Hancock warned the scheme was causing “serious” problems and argued “very strongly” against extending it.
While Johnson’s allies extensively briefed the media on what the former prime minister intended to say before his appearance at the inquiry last week, Sunak’s team have maintained a studied silence.
Senior Conservatives believe the turmoil engulfing Sunak over his Rwanda removals policy, including a key parliamentary vote on Tuesday in the face of a growing Tory rebellion, will overshadow his testimony at the inquiry.
However, one former minister suggested Sunak’s performance would have consequences at the general election, which is expected next year. “The bereaved families, the opposition and pressure groups will cite it in the campaign,” he warned.
He added he expected Sunak to be robust in his defence of Eat Out to Help Out. “I suspect he won’t give an inch. He’s very headstrong about being right about things, so I think he’ll give loads of statistics to argue his case. I imagine he’ll also signpost the good things he did, like the furlough and business support schemes.”
Among the other serious questions facing Sunak is the suggestion he argued against the imposition of lockdown measures when the virus first hit in early 2020, and again during a second wave of infections in the autumn of the same year.
In notes presented to the inquiry from a meeting with senior ministers in October 2020 ahead of the second wave, Vallance accused Sunak of “clutching at straws” as he argued against new restrictions even though transmission rates were picking up again.
“Very bad meeting in no.10,” Vallance wrote. “CX [Chancellor] using increasingly specific and spurious arguments against closing hospitality.”
In an extract from his notes from another meeting the same month, Vallance wrote that Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s former chief adviser, suggested in a meeting that Sunak believed it was “OK” to “just let people die”.
Vallance accused the Treasury more broadly of “pure dogma” in a diary entry from October 2021, in which he wrote there was “no evidence, no transparency” over the department’s economic analysis of the pandemic.
Professor Dame Angela McLean, the government’s current chief scientific adviser, referred to “Dr Death the Chancellor” in a private message to John Edmunds, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
When she wrote the message in September 2020, McLean was chief scientific adviser at the UK defence ministry. Edmunds told the inquiry the comment “could well” have been a reference to the Eat Out to Help Out scheme.
The inquiry has also heard how Johnson joked in January 2021 that the “pro death squad” from the Treasury should be brought in to unlock restrictions across the country.
Alex Thomas, programme director at the Institute for Government think-tank, said Sunak was likely to face a “rough time” during questioning over how “bullish” he was about keeping the economy open in the face of public health arguments for lockdown.
Politically, however, that stance aligned him with the “centre of gravity” in the ruling Conservative party so recalling it may stand him in good stead with his colleagues, Thomas added.