Video Icon
COVID INQUIRY

Sunak wanted to ‘let people die’ during pandemic, Vallance tells Covid inquiry

Chancellor’s Eat Out to Help Out plan helped spread coronavirus, added former chief scientific adviser
Chris Smyth
,
Tom Whipple
The Times
The diary of Sir Patrick Vallance, right, written at the time of the pandemic, contained stinging criticism of Boris Johnson and his chancellor, Rishi Sunak
The diary of Sir Patrick Vallance, right, written at the time of the pandemic, contained stinging criticism of Boris Johnson and his chancellor, Rishi Sunak
MATT DUNHAM/EPA
Chris Smyth
,
Tom Whipple
The Times

Rishi Sunak wanted to “just let people die” during discussions of a second lockdown in 2020, according to extracts from Sir Patrick Vallance’s diary.

The former chief scientific adviser also said that Sunak’s Eat Out to Help Out policy spread Covid and unilaterally reversed public health messaging.

Vallance said he was not consulted about the policy and would have been “very clear” that it was going to spread the virus, in a direct rebuke to the prime minister.

In a day of testimony at the Covid inquiry Vallance said that Boris Johnson was “bamboozled” by statistics and struggled to understand scientific concepts, while accusing Matt Hancock of repeatedly saying things that were not true.

Sir Patrick Vallance: Boris Johnson ‘struggled’ with some of the scientific concepts

In an extract from diaries written after a meeting in October