Judith Burns
Reporting from the inquiry

“Of course we were unbelievably busy, responding to the biggest civil emergency in 100 years,” Hancock told the inquiry as his seventh and likely final appearance drew to a close.

In sometimes tense exchanges he responded to questions from Kate Beattie, representing a disabled people’s organisations (DPO), and Pete Weatherby, barrister for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK.

Weatherby asked whether Hancock had used the lack of “levers” available to him to act on Covid at the start of the pandemic as “an excuse for things when they went wrong”.

“This is a very easy thing to say with hindsight,” the former health secretary responded.

“The reality of the situation is that I had to act with the tools that I had and that’s what I did and drove the life-saving effort to make sure things weren’t even worse than they were," Hancock added.

Elsewhere, Hancock described the concept of blanket do-not-resuscitate orders as "abhorrent". He said he only saw this happen once "and we jumped on it".

If it was more widespread, he said: "It did not come to my attention and if it did happen it's totally unacceptable."

He said the social care sector "was badly in need of and remains badly in need of reform”, adding that in the event of another pandemic, he feared the situation had become “worse not better”.

We're now ending our coverage of the UK's Covid inquiry for today. Thank you for joining.

Judith Burns
Reporting from the inquiry

Image source, PA Media

In an irritable exchange, former health secretary Matt Hancock hit out at accusations that his claim that the government was trying to throw a protective ring around care homes was empty rhetoric.

He urged the inquiry to focus on the substance of what the government was doing, rather than the rhetoric.

The inquiry heard that some people later accused him of lying when he made the comment on 15 May 2020.

Earlier, he said the decision to discharge patients from hospitals into care homes when testing was not available was the least worst solution “to the nexus of problems we were facing”.

Responding to questions from the barrister to the inquiry, Jacqueline Carey KC, Hancock said: “You know there may be campaign groups and politically motivated bodies that say other things.

“What I care about though is the substance and frankly that’s what this inquiry should care about after all the millions of pounds that have been spent on it."

Inquiry chair Lady Hallett, responded: “And I can assure you, Mr Hancock, it is what I care about.”

Judith Burns
Reporting from the inquiry

Image source, PA

Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock will give evidence at the Covid inquiry for the seventh and, likely, last time today.

Hancock was responsible for services in England where more than 43,000 died with Covid between March 2020 and January 2022, many of them in the early weeks of the pandemic.

The barrister for the inquiry has warned this section will be "emotive and distressing".

On Monday, the lawyer for a bereaved families group quoted a civil servant who said the high number of deaths in care homes amounted to "generational slaughter".

For five weeks the inquiry will focus on evidence from bereaved relatives and disabled people, care worker associations and care providers, as well as trade unions and government.

Key issues include the March 2020 decision to rapidly discharge some hospital patients into care homes, "do not resuscitate" notices placed on some care home residents, and visiting policies which stopped families seeing their loved ones for months.