‘Feral … brutal and useless’ – Covid inquiry hears fresh evidence about how Sedwill rated Johnson and his teamKeith asks about Boris Johnson. Lee Cain, his communications director, said this was the wrong crisis for his skill set. Dominic Cummings also criticised Johnson’s decision-making abilities.
Sedwill says he recognises these opinions, but would not put it like that.
He says his job was to build around any PM a set of mechanisms to allow them to make decisions.
Part of my job was to build around any prime minister a mechanism or a set of mechanisms that enabled them to make decisions, and then those decisions to be enacted effectively.
It would not have been responsible to stop trying to find a way of working with the PM, he says.
Keith says he is not saying Sedwill should have done that.
Sedwill says at some points Johnson would be gung-ho, and at other points he would be reasonable and take decisions. It was a “dialectic” approach. He says this was exhausting, but Sedwill says he sought to make allowance for this.
Q: These complaints continued. Doesn’t that show that your attempts to build a system to manage this failed?
Sedwill says he does not accept that. He says the complaints relate to how Johnson took decisions. He could not change that. But he wanted to create a system that allowed decisions taken this way to be implemented. He tried to ensure that, whatever was happening in the inner circle, cabinet ministers were involved in them.
Keith quotes an extract from Sir Patrick Vallance’s diary, from August 2020, where Vallance quoted Sedwill as saying: “This administration is brutal and useless.”
Sedwill says he does not remember making the comment, but says he does not doubt the accuracy of what Vallance said.
I can’t actually recall what might have prompted it but … I don’t doubt Sir Patrick’s memory. It must have been a moment of acute frustration with something.
Keith quotes from another exchange, where Simon Case, Sedwill’s successor, described the PM and his associates as “feral”. Case said:
It is like taming wild animals. Nothing in my past experience has prepared me for this madness. The PM and the people he chooses to surround himself with are basically feral.
Sedwill agreed, saying: “I have the bite marks.”
This is from the FT’s Laura Hughes.
Messages exchanged between two of the top civil servants during pandemic.
Simon Case: “It’s like taming wild animals… The PM and the people he chooses to surround himself with are basically feral”.
Mark Sedwill: “I have the bite marks.” pic.twitter.com/DoJUn4vJzn
— Laura Hughes (@Laura_K_Hughes) November 8, 2023Q: Who were you talking about?
Sedwill says there was sometimes “gallows humour” in these circumstances.
Q: This culture was having an impact on how decisions were taken.
Sedwill says it was a very stressful period. But, on the really big decisions, he suggests the right decisions were taken at the right time. Other administrations came to similar decisions within the same timescale.
Key events
Starmer criticises PM for wanting to hold Met ‘accountable’ over pro-Palestine march, saying it’s Braverman who’s at faultKeir Starmer has criticised Rishi Sunak for saying this morning that he wanted to hold the Metropolitan police “accountable” for its decision to allow the pro-Palestinian march in London to go ahead on Saturday, Armistice Day. In a message on X, Starmer said Sunak should be holding Suella Braverman, the home secretary, to account instead for “picking a fight with the police”.
Remembrance events must be respected. Full stop.
But the person the PM needs to hold accountable is his Home Secretary. Picking a fight with the police instead of working with them is cowardice.
The Tories put party before country. Labour will deliver the change Britain needs.
Remembrance events must be respected. Full stop.
But the person the PM needs to hold accountable is his Home Secretary. Picking a fight with the police instead of working with them is cowardice.
The Tories put party before country. Labour will deliver the change Britain needs.
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) November 8, 2023 Johnson claims he had no concerns about performance of any cabinet minister over Covid, including Hancock, inquiry toldKeith referred to an extract from Boris Johnson’s witness statement to the inquiry in which Johnson said he never had any concerns about any cabinet minister, including Matt Hancock. Johnson said:
I did not have any concerns regarding the performance of any cabinet minister including Matt Hancock. I do not think that I received any advice from Sir Mark Sedwill that Matt should be removed.
Sedwill said he did not provide any formal advice to Johnson to sack Hancock. But he said Johnson “would have been under no illusions as to my view about what was best”.
Sedwill says ‘constant, destabilising attacks’ on his position as cabinet secretary got worse after Johnson became PMKeith asks about the conversation Sedwill had with Boris Johnson in May 2020 where Sedwill agreed to move on later that year.
Q: Did that conversation affect the stability of the civil service?
Sedwill says there was a discussion at that meeting, but Sedwill says he did not decide to leave until early June.
He says the departure of a cabinet secretary would inevitably be destabilising.
Some colleagues urged him to stay on, he says.
But he says the “constant, destabilising attacks” on him and the position of cabinet secretary were damaging. He says this pre-dated Johnson, but got worse when Johnson was PM.
For example, there was a false claim that Sedwill wanted to delay Brexit.
Sedwill says: “There is only so much lightning a lightning conductor can take.”
He says he thought it would be better to have a new cabinet secretary, because someone appointed by them would not be subject to those attacks.
Sedwill joked about need to sack Hancock ‘to save lives and protect the NHS’, Covid inquiry toldKeith is asking now about Hancock, and he cites comments from Sedwill in his private messages disparaging the health secretary.
Sedwill says there was a problem with Hancock. He says he urged Boris Johnson to consider moving him.
Q: You said Johnson should sack him?
Sedwill said he used that phrase in a message to Simon Case, but not when talking to Johnson directly.
Keith says the message said they should sack Hancock “to save lives and protect the NHS”.
Sedwill says this was “gallows humour”. (It is a joke about the the government’s Covid slogan, ‘Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives.’)
‘Feral … brutal and useless’ – Covid inquiry hears fresh evidence about how Sedwill rated Johnson and his teamKeith asks about Boris Johnson. Lee Cain, his communications director, said this was the wrong crisis for his skill set. Dominic Cummings also criticised Johnson’s decision-making abilities.
Sedwill says he recognises these opinions, but would not put it like that.
He says his job was to build around any PM a set of mechanisms to allow them to make decisions.
Part of my job was to build around any prime minister a mechanism or a set of mechanisms that enabled them to make decisions, and then those decisions to be enacted effectively.
It would not have been responsible to stop trying to find a way of working with the PM, he says.
Keith says he is not saying Sedwill should have done that.
Sedwill says at some points Johnson would be gung-ho, and at other points he would be reasonable and take decisions. It was a “dialectic” approach. He says this was exhausting, but Sedwill says he sought to make allowance for this.
Q: These complaints continued. Doesn’t that show that your attempts to build a system to manage this failed?
Sedwill says he does not accept that. He says the complaints relate to how Johnson took decisions. He could not change that. But he wanted to create a system that allowed decisions taken this way to be implemented. He tried to ensure that, whatever was happening in the inner circle, cabinet ministers were involved in them.
Keith quotes an extract from Sir Patrick Vallance’s diary, from August 2020, where Vallance quoted Sedwill as saying: “This administration is brutal and useless.”
Sedwill says he does not remember making the comment, but says he does not doubt the accuracy of what Vallance said.
I can’t actually recall what might have prompted it but … I don’t doubt Sir Patrick’s memory. It must have been a moment of acute frustration with something.
Keith quotes from another exchange, where Simon Case, Sedwill’s successor, described the PM and his associates as “feral”. Case said:
It is like taming wild animals. Nothing in my past experience has prepared me for this madness. The PM and the people he chooses to surround himself with are basically feral.
Sedwill agreed, saying: “I have the bite marks.”
This is from the FT’s Laura Hughes.
Messages exchanged between two of the top civil servants during pandemic.
Simon Case: “It’s like taming wild animals… The PM and the people he chooses to surround himself with are basically feral”.
Mark Sedwill: “I have the bite marks.” pic.twitter.com/DoJUn4vJzn
— Laura Hughes (@Laura_K_Hughes) November 8, 2023Q: Who were you talking about?
Sedwill says there was sometimes “gallows humour” in these circumstances.
Q: This culture was having an impact on how decisions were taken.
Sedwill says it was a very stressful period. But, on the really big decisions, he suggests the right decisions were taken at the right time. Other administrations came to similar decisions within the same timescale.
Keith is now asking about Dominic Cummings’ criticisms of the Cabinet Office. He describe it as a “dumpster fire”.
Sedwill says some of what Cummings said was fair, but most of it wasn’t.
Sedwill tells Covid inquiry there were problems with accuracy of what Matt Hancock saidThe Covid inquiry is back from lunch and Hugo Keith KC is still questioning Mark Sedwill, the former cabinet secretary.
Keith asks about an exchange that Sedwill had with Simon Case, who succeeded him as cabinet secretary, where Case said the legitimacy of the government had been eroded.
Sedwill says he thinks that is a reference to Dominic Cummings going to Barnard Castle.
He says he was particularly concerned about the response of Matt Hancock, the health secretary, and Suella Braverman, the attorney general. (Hancock and Braverman both issued statements supporting Cummings, which implied they were prejudging any decision about whether he broke lockdown rules.)
Keith points out that in the same exchange, Sedwill questions whether Matt Hancock, the health secretary, can be trusted.
Sedwill accepts this was an issue. He says his deputy, Helen MacNamara, covered this in her evidence to the inquiry this last week.
Sedwill also says the CW in this exchange probably refers to Chris Wormald, the permanent secretary at the Department of Health, and not Chris Whitty.
UPDATE: Keith said:
The process by which Mr Hancock’s truthfulness, or candour, or lack of candour or general approach, however one describes it … was not an issue that was confined to perhaps one or two individuals, notably Mr Cummings … There was a general issue surrounding Mr Hancock. Is that a fair summary?
And Sedwill replied:
Yes and you heard from Helen MacNamara on that last week.
This is from the Times’ Chris Smyth.
Mark Sedwill now adopting the default strategy for witnesses having a tough time at Covid inquiry
If in doubt, dump on Matt Hancock
Q: “There was a general issue a general problem surrounding Mr Hancock [and his truthfulness] Is that fair summary?”
A: “Yes”
— Chris Smyth (@Smyth_Chris) November 8, 2023Exchange of messages between Sedwill and Case Photograph: Covid inquiryLabour says Sunak has ‘no grip on reality’ after he wrongly claims debt is fallingYesterday, in a video released on social media, Rishi Sunak claimed “debt is falling”.
This King’s Speech delivers change.
Change in our economy.
Change in our society.
Change in our communities.
It takes long-term decisions for a brighter future ⬇️
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) November 7, 2023But it’s not. As Ben Zaranko, an economist from the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, told Bloomberg:
Public sector debt is currently rising in cash terms, real terms, and, most importantly, as a percent of national income.
Sunak may have been referring to a forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility saying public sector debate should be falling towards the end of the decade.
Labour said the error showed Sunak had “no grip on reality”. In a statement Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, said:
The prime minister appears to have no grip on the reality of 13 years of Tory economic failure.
Rishi Sunak promised to cut debt, but the national debt has hit record levels, surpassing £2tn for the first time ever.
Labour will introduce tough new fiscal rules to build a rock of economic stability, never playing fast and loose with the economy.
Tory peer Nicholas Soames backs Met’s decision to allow pro-Palestinian march and urges PM not to play politics with issue
Rajeev Syal
Nicholas Soames, the Tory peer and grandson of Winston Churchill, has said that Rishi Sunak’s government should be “very careful” about “playing politics” with fundamental British freedoms.
Referring to government moves to stop the pro-Palestinian march going ahead in London on Saturday, Soames told the Guardian:
The government needs to proceed extremely carefully in this matter. Tens of millions of people died in two world wars so that British people have the right and freedom to express their beliefs. You cannot just decide that this is not the case and put the head of the Met under this kind of pressure.
If the Met chief, who I have a great deal of time for, says there is no good reason to ban the march, there is no good reason for banning the march. Most of the people who plan to attend the march have a point to make and plan to do so peacefully. If a small number of people cause trouble, the police can deal with it,
The government needs to be very careful to make sure they do not look as if they are playing politics. They need to be very careful that this is not some sort of gimmick. Operational matters are for the commissioner. It is his judgment that should count and I would caution the government to be very cautious about eroding freedoms.
Nicholas Soames. Photograph: Simon Dawson/ReutersKeith shows Sedwill an email from Simon Case (who succeeded Sedwill as cabinet secretary) in which Case praised for Sedwill for arranging not to let Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, and Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, to attend a meeting where the lifting of restrictions was discussed in May 2020. Case said the decision to exclude the two was a “genius” move, which helped a decision to be taken.
Sedwill says Johnson was at his best in small meetings. He says Vallance and Whitty had plenty of access to Johnson anyway, and he says Vallance was happy with what was agreed.
They have now stopped for lunch.
Email from Simon Case. Photograph: Covid inquiryNo 10 rejects claim Sunak trying to pressure Met into banning pro-Palestinian march by vowing to hold it ‘accountable’Downing Street has rejected claims that Rishi Sunak’s comment this morning about holding the Metropolitan police “accountable” for its decision to allow the pro-Palestinian march to go ahead on Saturday amounted to putting pressure on the commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley.
When this claim was put to him, the PM’s spokesperson replied:
No, that’s part and parcel of how government and the Met operate. The Met are operationally independent, it’s the job of the prime minister and the government to hold them to account for their approach. So, that is what the prime minister will be doing.
Keith asks Sedwill about a note he wrote to the PM as the first wave of Covid was coming to an end saying it appeared the UK was doing worse than other countries.
Memo to PM Photograph: Covid inquirySedwill says he was referring to the excess deaths figures, which seemed to show the UK doing worse than comparable countries.
Keith is now asking about what happened when Boris Johnson fell ill.
Sedwill says it was clear that Dominic Raab, the first secretary, should take over in the event of Johnson being incapacitated.
Q: When Johnson came back to work, to what extent was he affected by his illness?
Sedwill says there is a broader point about Johnson’s decision-making style.
Keith says they will come back to that.
Sedwill says he will leave that for now.
But he says it took Johnson a long time to recover. The issue was stamina, he says.
Sedwill says he thinks Covid deaths would have been reduced if ‘stay at home’ order had been given earlierSedwill accepts that the “stay at home” order given on 16 March could have been given earlier.
Q: And if it had, the lockdown could have been avoided?
Sedwill says that is possible. But he says he is “highly sceptical” about whether the lockdown could have been avoided entirely.
He says proper academic research is needed to show what might have happened if the soft lockdown had happened earlier.
But he says he accepts that acting early would probably have had a “positive effect” on casualties.
It might not have avoided the need for lockdown. It is more likely to have had an impact on the duration of the lockdown, he says.
Keith is now asking about the lockdown decision announced on Monday 23 March.
He says Boris Johnson started work on what he was going to say at 2.05pm on the Monday.
But the Cobra meeting where this was discussed did not take place until 5pm, and the cabinet meeting to discuss this did not take place until the following day.
He says this implies the decision was not taken by cabinet – even though Sedwill said earlier cabinet should be the key decision-making body.
Sedwill accepts this. But he says the decision to have a lockdown had been taken in a separate Covid-S meeting. He says that was constitutionally proper.
Sedwill apologises for proposing in private chickenpox party-type approach to Covid, saying it now sounds ‘heartless’Keith asks about the comment from Sedwill implying a chickenpox party approach might work for Covid.
Sedwill says this remark was made before the meetings had taken place where No 10 realised a new approach was needed. He says when Ben Warner, another official, challenged what he said, he realised the chickenpox analogy was inappropriate. He says this was a remark made in private.
He says:
These were private exchanges and I certainly had not expected for this to become public.
I understand how, in particular, the interpretation that has been put on it, it must have come across as someone in my role was both heartless and thoughtless about this, and I genuinely am neither. But I do understand the distress that must have caused and I apologise for that.
Keith is now asking about the switch to a suppression strategy.
Sedwill says did not see this as a switch from plan A to plan B. He says he thought this was an acceleration and intensification of measures Sage had already said might be necessary.
How Sedwill told Cummings he would not let key decisions be taken by PM and ‘bunch of Spads’ with no ministers or expertsKeith is now showing the inquiry an exchange of emails between Dominic Cummings and Sedwill on 11 March 2020. Cummings wanted to set up a new meeting to deal with Covid decisions.
Email from Dominic Cummings. Photograph: Covid inquiryIn his reply, Sedwill said he objected to the idea that key decisions would be taken by “a bunch of No 10 Spads (special advisers)“ and the PM, with no ministers, no experts and no scientists there. “We are not running a dictatorship here,” he said.
We are not running a dictatorship here and the PM is not taking nationally significant decisions with a bunch of No10 SpAds and no ministers, no operational experts and no scientists. If necessary, I will take over the 8:15 slot and chair a daily meeting myself.
Sedwill’s reply. Photograph: Covid inquirySedwill says the email expressed “pretty pungently my views about collective government”.
At the inquiry Keith showed Sedwill this document, from a report from the civil contingencies secretariat, illustrating possible deaths from Covid. It was drawn up on 28 February 2020.
Keith asked why levels of alarm in government were not higher as a result. “They should have been,” Sedwill said.
Government document from 28 February 2020 about possible Covid deaths. Photograph: Covid inquiry