Burnham is asked about his last meeting before lockdown was formally announced on 23 March - it was with then Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.

Asked if there was any indication lockdown was about to be announced, he says: "From my memory, it wasn't so much what was happening in those meetings, it was what was happening outside of them."

He says up until 23 March, he can remember "things becoming increasingly fraught" to the point where he appeared on Good Morning Britain on 23 March and called for national lockdown.

"It felt strange to say it when the government weren't saying it at that time," he says.

He continues: "It felt like the whole world was saying 'we cant carry on like this' and yet, from memory, I think Grant Shapps possibly might have alluded to 'there is an announcement coming later'.

"But no, we were not sat down and briefed on the implications of national lockdown."

Two hours later, the PM announced the lockdown on national TV, points out counsel to the inquiry Dermot Keating.

The mayor of Greater Manchester says he realised “just how serious it was” via community meetings in January and February 2020 when people were in a “very high state of alarm” and asking him for help.

Everyone's filed back into the inquiry room in central London, and we're continuing to hear from Manchester mayor Andy Burnham.

He's giving evidence this afternoon before Liverpool mayor Steve Rotheram - we'll be bringing it all to you live.

Don't forget, you can watch along by tapping the play button at the top of the page.

Image source, Covid inquiry

We've been hearing from London mayor Sadiq Khan this morning, who told the inquiry he had been "kept in the dark" in the early stages of the pandemic.

Asked about his exclusion from the government's emergency Cobra meetings early in the pandemic, he said it was a "common theme" to discover plans in media reports.

Khan said Covid had exposed and even increased inequalities across the country and the inquiry heard he had called it "evidence of structural racism" early in the pandemic.

He told of his "frustration" over the second national lockdown in November 2020, and said Boris Johnson was "not aware" other countries had imposed lockdowns in March 2020.

We've also just started to hear from Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, who told the inquiry how the city's leaders took action themselves in the absence of "any guidance from a national level".

His written statement revealed he first became aware of Covid through media reports and via engagement with the Chinese community in Manchester.

Burnham said his experience as secretary of state for health during the 2009 swine flu pandemic gave him an "understanding of how the situation might develop".

He also described a time he saw an article about the pandemic, written by a health minister, which appeared behind a paywall and thought the country wasn't "getting this right".

The inquiry is breaking for lunch but Burnham's evidence will continue when it resumes.

The Greater Manchester mayor will be back to continue answering the inquiry's questions at 14:05 GMT. Stay with us.

Burnham talks about a time he saw an article about the pandemic written by a health minister, which appeared behind a paywall. He says he thought that, as a country, the UK wasn't "getting this right... the public needs information at this moment in time."

Burnham says he posted on Twitter about his experience with swine flu when he was a secretary of state and added that he was aware that communicating during a pandemic is difficult - and called for a daily briefing.

"I said there should be a briefing not led by politicians, because a mistake I made in swine flu was giving out information that was then seen politically."

Burnham now says that communications need to be improved and if there's a disagreement between scientists and politicians this needs to be made clear to the public. This would make communications "less political," Burnham says.

Baroness Hallett then says that some people associate experts with decision-making and attribute responsibility to the experts. Burnham says it is better to separate the roles - while during Covid these were all merged together.

He calls for more experts and fewer politicians in communications during an emergency such as a pandemic.

Burnham is asked if looking back with hindsight, he thinks Manchester should have done more and earlier.

"It's hard to say because we weren't getting any guidance from a national level," he responds.

"It wasn't made clear to us what we should be doing so we were putting together the picture ourselves.

"Always with hindsight you would say it would have been better if we had done it earlier but actually we had started to pull together collaborative arrangements in February."

Burnham says that "in the absence of very clear instructions from central government", he thinks Manchester was "quite unique actually" in establishing "our own full committee" that united political and administrative leadership.

Dermot Keating, counsel to the inquiry, asks Burnham about his early knowledge of the pandemic.

He asks whether it is fair to say the mayor's perception of Covid's seriousness changed particularly on 13 March.

"It was changing all the way through," Burnham replies, and refers to his experience as secretary of state for health during the Swine Flu pandemic in 2009.

"I obviously had an understanding of how the situation might develop so I was watching it carefully," he says, adding that he was following World Health Organization (WHO) statements.

Burnham says he took some steps in February 2020 but the formal response phase started properly in March.

A Covid emergency committee was established in Greater Manchester - including himself, constituent member leaders, directors of public health and the chief constable and chief fire officer.

"This wasn't something we were required to do but something we decided to do ourselves to make sure we were as highly coordinated as we could be."

In his written statement, Burnham said that he first became aware of Covid through media reports and through engagement with the Chinese community in Manchester.

He tells the inquiry that Manchester has a longstanding twinning arrangement with Wuhan, in China, where Covid was first identified, and so some of the familial connections Chinese families in Manchester had were with that very area.

The community was in a state of high alarm, Burnham says, and people asked him for help in getting PPE through airports.

Image source, PA Media

Next up this morning is the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham.

He served in Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet, but stepped down to run for the mayoralty - a position he won in 2017 with 63% of the vote.

He frequently confronted the government over its handling of the pandemic, and its decisions over coronavirus restrictions.

This earnt him the nickname "the King of the North" - given to him by one of the city's bars.

He’s giving evidence to the inquiry now, so stay tuned and remember: you can watch his session live by hitting the Play button at the top of this page.

Khan has now finished giving evidence to the inquiry - next up is Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, who is being sworn in.

Stay with us as we bring you live updates.

Khan reiterates that the second lockdown could have been avoided with better planning from the government.

He says his exclusion from contingency planning by the government meant he could not give advice "from the coalface" which he believes "could have made a difference".

"I think lives may not have been lost," he says, adding that it "upsets" him to think of the over 20,000 Londoners who lost their lives because of the pandemic.

There was "poor process, poor judgement, poor decision-making," he adds.

Khan says that it was a "common theme" at various stages of the pandemic to "discover stuff" from the media.

He is asked how that impacted his ability to deliver public health messages and to coordinate the Covid response in London.

Khan says that he and the first ministers of the devolved nations "can be trusted allies... and if [the government] can trust us with things like terrorism, why not with... civil emergencies like Covid?"

The inquiry then looks at a letter to the PM, dated 3 August 2020, in which Khan said he had found out "with great surprise" from the Sunday papers that the government held a major exercise on the resurgence of the virus.

Khan wrote he thought it was "unacceptable" that such a plan could be discussed without awareness of London's government and called it an "affront to Londoners".

The inquiry hears that Khan said Covid had "exposed" and "increased" inequalities across the country and called it "evidence of structural racism" at a relatively early stage in the pandemic.

He is asked about a letter he sent to then Health Secretary Matt Hancock on 7 May about the fact ethnicity was not being recorded on death certificates and the impact, therefore, was not properly understood.

In the letter, he had urged action to introduce routine ethnic data collection within death registrations in England.

He says he got no immediate response and so wrote to the home secretary a couple of weeks later on 26 May to raise his concerns.

"It appeared to me that the government didn't really understand the issues I was talking about," he says.

"I didn't realise until the pandemic that we didn't record ethnicity when it came to death certificates."

It was not until 22 October 2020 that the government announced it would be mandating the recording of ethnicity on death certificates, the inquiry hears.

Once the tiering system was introduced in England in October 2020, Khan asked for London to be moved from tier one - where the capital was initially placed - to tier two, the lawyer says.

Khan says he lobbied the PM for a circuit breaker - a tight set of restrictions for a fixed period of time - in the run up to the second national lockdown in November 2020.

So, when that lockdown did come into play, he felt "frustration".

"Before lockdown one, we knew what was happening around the world - we delayed and we dithered.

"Lockdown two may not have even been needed had the government taken the advice from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) [and] the lobbying from me...

"Had action been taken sooner, I argue there would not need to be a lockdown maybe, [which] means less damage to the economy," he adds.

A reminder of England's tier systempublished at 12:37 Greenwich Mean Time 27 November 2023

12:37 GMT 27 November 2023

Matthew Cole
BBC Westminster

In Autumn 2020, the government brought in a streamlined “tiers” system to tell areas what level of lockdown they should be undertaking.

The idea was to end the hotchpotch of restrictions brought in to tackle hotspots in places like Lancashire, Leicester, and parts of Merseyside.

But the same rows persisted - with politicians continuing to row about their impact on society and businesses.

The effectiveness and organisation of those preliminary restrictions – and the tiers system that followed them - will also form a key part of the questioning of Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram later today.

We are now looking at a letter from Khan to the then prime minister Boris Johnson, dated 18 September, in which Khan advocated a plan for increased measures in London as Covid cases rose.

The demand was made in advance of the tier system being introduced, with the letter saying: "It is increasingly likely that additional measures will soon be needed."

"We can't afford to be slow to respond again," Khan wrote.

He also wrote that it would be better for measures - such as a circuit breaker - to be imposed early rather than to have to resort to a full lockdown when too late.

Andrew O'Connor KC, counsel for the inquiry, asks Sadiq Khan about Cobra meetings during the pandemic - an emergency response committee made up of ministers, civil servants and others.

Khan points out that there was an absence of these meetings from May to September 2020 after the pandemic had begun.

The lawyer points out that other individuals who have been questioned by the inquiry have agreed that Cobra was best utilised as a "short-term measure" and was not an appropriate forum for "long-term pandemic management".

Khan argues that "you can't beat colleagues working together collegiately".

The London mayor says the PM needs to be in the room when discussions around Covid are taking place because he has the power to "pull the lever" and "make things happen".

"In my view, had there been better processes, that would have led to better decision making," he adds.

Khan says the Covid virus was having an unequal effect on ethnic minorities.

"If you see the photographs of the first 10 doctors who lost their lives, what strikes us is they are all people of colour," he says.

Khan continues: "In London, we lost 105 transport workers."

He says he would write to the families of every transport worker he had the details of, explaining: "I noticed the names I was writing were all ethnic minority names.

He says the phrase he used at the time was: "We might all be facing the same storm but people are in different sized boats."

Sadiq Khan tells the Covid inquiry he was "alarmed" at what he was told when the Covid pandemic arrived in the UK.

But the London mayor says he was "kept in the dark" about what was happening in 2020 as the country went into a national lockdown.