But Khan did attend a Cobra meeting on Monday 16 March, he tells the inquiry.
He says he was told for the first time at this meeting how bad the situation was. (This was the day Johnson told people to stay at home.)
He says he was told about the “really serious” problem posed by people with Covid in intensive care units in London hospitals.
And he says Johnson described this as the biggest challenge facing the country since the second world war
He says he felt he had been “kept in the dark as the elected mayor of London”.
I had been kept in the dark as the elected mayor of London and I felt almost winded in relation to what was happening in London and also realising there were things we could have done in relation to some of these issues.”
I was alarmed by what I was being told in relation to where we were and where we may go to. I will never forget that sort of feeling of lack of power, lack of influence, not knowing what was happening in our city.
There were things he could have done if he had known was the situation was, he says.
Some measures he had taken – like enhanced cleaning on the Underground.
But he was alarmed by the situation, he says – and concerned by his lack of power.
Heather Hallett, the chair, says Khan was warned by Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, that a pandemic was coming. She asks what Khan would have done differently.
Khan replies:
Some of the things that happened subsequently.
So it was me that lobbied the prime minister to go to lockdown, it was me that lobbied the prime minister in relation to the inability to keep social distance on public transport so people shouldn’t be using public transport unless they had to.
Hallett says it would still have been for government to take the actual decisions.
Khan accepts that, but he says if he had been at Cobra, he could have pushed for those earlier.
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Towards the end of his evidence this morning Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, said the government initially had “no understanding” of the importance of gathering data on the impact of Covid on different ethnic groups, PA Media reports. PA says:
The inquiry heard Kahn wrote to then health secretary, Matt Hancock, on 7 May 2020 urging him to introduce routine ethnic data collection in death registrations, as evidence emerged of the disproportionate impact of the virus on black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.
When he did not receive a response from Hancock, Khan wrote to then home secretary, Priti Patel, two weeks later to raise concerns.
He added: “But it appeared to me the government didn’t really understand the issues that I was talking about.”
Khan then suggested the deficit in understanding could have been due to few members of the cabinet representing diverse communities.
He added: “I was given short shrift. There was no understanding of why it is important and also no action.”
The government introduced the monitoring of ethnicity in October 2020.
The Law Society of England and Wales has said further cuts to the criminal justice system as a consequence of the autumn statement would be “unthinkable” at a time when it is “crying out for investment”.
The Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) analysis of how tax cuts in the statement will be paid for suggests that “unprotected” departments such as the Ministry of Justice could face a real-terms cut in their budgets equivalent to 2.3% a year between now and the end of the next parliament.
The Law Society president, Nick Emmerson, said:
Chronic shortages of judges and lawyers mean there isn’t enough capacity to cover all the cases and some of the courtrooms they sit in are falling apart.
The OBR’s report highlights the strain on public services including the crown court backlogs hitting a record high of 65,000 in August this year.
There’s little hope of the government achieving its target of cutting the backlog to 53,000 by March 2025 unless it invests in justice now.
He said numbers of criminal defence solicitors were in rapid decline and there are also huge delays in civil courts and large parts of the country where there are no legal aid lawyers available. Emmerson said the impact of further cuts on “an already overstretched and understaffed justice system” would be “unthinkable”.
Back at the Covid inquiry Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, says early in the crisis he called for a daily briefing from scientists. He says, from his experience of swine flu, he thought it was better to have health messages coming from experts, not politicians.
Heather Hallett, the chair, puts it to Burnham that, if experts did the briefings, people might think the experts had taken the decisions, not politicians.
Burnham says in 2020 the problem was that it was “all merged together”. He accepts communication is difficult. But he repeats his point about how it would have been better to have heard more from experts.
He says, when the government was putting areas into tier three restrictions, the public did not realise how little support these measures had from scientists, he says.
The inquiry is now breaking for lunch. It will be back at 2.05pm.
PA Media has more on the pay offer for hospital consultants in England. (See 12.51pm.) It says:
The British Medical Association said the offer constituted a 4.95% “investment in pay” on top of the 6% pay rise already awarded this year.
The majority of consultants will receive an extra rise of up to 12.8%, depending on their pay point, the BMA said, adding this was separate to any pay award recommended by the review body on doctors’ and dentists’ remuneration (DDRB) for 2024/25.
The union said if its members voted to accept the deal, the changes would be applicable from January 2024, but would be paid retrospectively in April 2024.
And this is from Dr Vishal Sharma, BMA consultants committee chair.
We are pleased that after a month of intense talks and more than six months of strike action we never wanted to take, we have now got an offer we can put to members. It is a huge shame that it has needed consultants to take industrial action to get the government to this point when we called for talks many months ago.
The 4.95% investment and much-needed changes to the pay scale system comes after we successfully persuaded the government to reform the punitive pension taxation laws earlier this year, and we also now have commitments to reforming the pay review process, which has been a key ask from the profession throughout our dispute. Only by restoring the independence of this process can we hope to restore consultant pay over the coming years.
How each consultant will benefit will depend on their individual circumstances, and we will be providing them with as much detail as we can, so they are able to look carefully through the details to help them decide whether to accept the offer.
Burnham say he first became aware of Covid as a result of contacts with the Chinese community in Manchester. The city has a long-standing twinning arrangement with Wuhan, he says. He was aware of the problem from January 2020, he says.
Back at the Covid inquiry Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has just started giving evidence.
He confirms that he is also a former health secretary. As soon as he was appointed, he had to deal with swine flu, he confirms.
Consultants in England have reached a deal with the government which could potentially end strikes, PA Media reports. PA says:
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said it reached an agreement with consultants from the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association (HCSA) after weeks of talks.
The deal will now be put to members of the unions.
If members agree to the deal, strikes by top hospital doctors would end.
DHSC officials said the new offer will “modernise the consultant contract and reform consultants’ pay structure”.
Commenting on the offer, Rishi Sunak said:
Ending damaging strike action in the NHS is vitally important if we want to continue making progress towards cutting waiting lists while making sure patients get the care they deserve.
This is a fair deal for consultants who will benefit from major reform to their contract, it is fair for taxpayers because it will not risk our ongoing work to tackle inflation, and most importantly it is a good deal for patients to see the end of consultant industrial action.
Turning away from the Covid inquiry, Rishi Sunak told the global investment summit that the appointment of David Cameron as foreign secretary did not mean the government wanted a return to the “golden era” approach to relations with China promoted by Cameron when he was PM.
Sunak said:
If David was here what he would say is the China of today is not the China he dealt with over a decade ago.
It has changed, it’s right that our strategy evolves to take account of that.
Our strategy can be summarised in three approaches: it’s to protect, align and engage.
We have got to protect the UK against the risks, where they manifest themselves.
Sadiq Khan is now being questioned by Brenda Campbell KC, who is representing Northern Ireland Covid Bereaved Families for Justice and Covid Bereaved Families for Justice.
Khan says it was “frustrating” that UK ministers did not seem to trust the metro mayors. This was surprising given that they are willing to trust mayors when dealing with issues like terrorism, he says. He says there was an assumption of bad faith which was unfair.
UPDATE: Khan said:
This is the frustrating thing. If the government under different prime ministers can trust us on issues to do with terrorism, counter-terrorism, and other issues, you’d think they’d be able to trust us when it comes to issues to do with a civil emergency, a crisis like the pandemic.
I think there was bad faith on the part of some members of the government, without being party political, and they projected that on us, whether it’s first ministers or mayors, which I think is unfair.
Khan told the inquiry that, if the government had acted earlier in the autumn of 2020, as he was proposing (see 12.27pm), a second lockdown could have been avoided. And, if that had happened, there would have been less damage to the economy, he said.
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