Shortly before its break, the inquiry turned to look at Javid's time as health secretary.

He took up his post at the end of June 2021 just as there were discussions around the lifting of some of the restrictions. You may remember the build-up was towards what was called “step four” of the four-step plan.

The lawyer asked whether the lifting of restrictions on 19 July was being called “freedom day” in No 10 - but Javid stressed it was quite the opposite.

He said the virus was still around and he didn’t want the public to think that everything was “back to normal”. Only some restrictions were being lifted on 19 July with measures on border control and the "test, trace and isolate" directive still in place.

He told the inquiry that there was enough evidence to loosen the restrictions at this time.

The enquiry is taking a break for lunch and will return in an hour.

Stay with us as we catch you up on the latest lines.

Jim Reed
Health reporter

The inquiry was just shown a letter sent by Sajid Javid when he was chancellor to the prime minister in February 2020.

The idea was to set out the key risks to the UK economy from the virus. Large sections are covered up and marked COMMERCIAL SENSITIVITY in capital letters.

What's interesting is the impact at that stage was again based on the "reasonable worst case scenario" of pandemic flu.

It would involve 50% of the workforce being infected over four months with a high mortality rate of 2.5%.

In that scenario, GDP - or the overall size of the economy - could be between 1% and 2.5% lower "compared with current expectations".

As it turned out, Covid was different in key ways to the flu pandemic that had been planned for. Controlling it ultimately involved locking down the entire country three times over the course of 2020 and 2021.

That reliance on planning for an influenza outbreak was criticised by many witnesses in the first module of this inquiry, which looked specially at pandemic preparedness.

Image source, Covid Inquiry

The inquiry lawyer Joanne Cecil moves to the issue of border controls and the advice surrounding stopping flights.

Javid said in his written testimony that he had became increasingly concerned about this issue around the end of January.

Javid explains that the Treasury's advice was not to stop flights and that he was told it was not an effective barrier unless other countries were doing the same.

Cecil puts to Javid that some say the Treasury produces economic analysis when it suits policy objectives and does not produce counter-argument analysis.

Javid replies: "My view was if you wanted a counter-analysis, a counter-narrative, you had to ask for it. As a minister, it wasn't something that would automatically be presented to you if you were [formulating] policy."

Hannah Miller
Political correspondent

Sajid Javid’s comments about the ‘dysfunctionality’ he witnessed as chancellor do not come as a surprise - it has long been known that there is no love lost between him and Dominic Cummings. But they are consistent with evidence given by some previous witnesses to the inquiry.

Having served under two previous prime ministers, he was one of the more experienced cabinet ministers prior to leaving office in February 2020. He describes the way Dominic Cummings operated as "very unusual".

The evidence is focused not just on the individuals in office at the time, but also the way that government functions more generally.

Sajid Javid has been telling the inquiry that the Treasury was concerned about the impact of Covid on the UK economy.

In February 2020, Javid says he was sent a note by his Treasury team which focused on the impact on the UK economy caused by an economic slowdown in China.

Javid specifies that this is how the Treasury saw the key risks, this was not the view of the government.

He tells the inquiry that he doesn't recall at this time, in early February, receiving or asking for any kind of advice on NPIs (non pharmaceutical interventions) or the impact they would potentially have on the UK economy.

We've been hearing about Cobra meetings during the pandemic.

These meetings are named after Cabinet Office Briefing Room A on Whitehall.

They are emergency response committees, get togethers of ministers, civil servants, the police, intelligence officers and others appropriate to whatever they are looking into.

• You can read more on Cobra here.

We now move on to why Javid did not attend the initial Cobra meetings in January and February when he was chancellor.

Javid explains that the treasury was represented at those meetings and Javid says that the chancellor normally would not attend a Cobra meeting that was not chaired by the prime minister.

He says that when the prime minister chairs them it is normally a more important meeting.

The first few meetings were chaired by the then-health secretary, Matt Hancock.

Sajid Javid says that if there was a "good reason" to attend then he would have been present.

Cecil asks Javid about the challenges faced in government during his time in cabinet.

In his witness statement, he described leaks as a "significant issue" in government during the early months of the pandemic.

But, he says he experienced the same level of leaks during Brexit discussions, especially during his own time as home secretary.

Having suggested that too much power was centralised in the hands of one particular special adviser (Spad) - Dominic Cummings - Javid is being asked about what could be done to prevent this in the future.

Javid says it would be hard to change the structural arrangements without imposing on the powers of the PM.

The chair asks if it would be beneficial if they answered to the permanent secretary and Cecil asks whether merit-based open recruitment might work better.

Javid says this would be too difficult and would "take something away which does have value" - the ability for ministers to "consider things from political perspective".

Javid recalls the day he resigned as chancellor. He tells the inquiry he was asked by Boris Johnson to take a break and think about this decision.

However, during the break he says he was told by Helen MacNamara, top civil servant, and Edward Lister, then interim chief of staff, that the prime minister didn't "really know what he is doing”.

“Dominic Cummings will be gone in a few weeks, there is no way he can survive the way he’s going on,” summarises Javid on what was said to him.

He adds that: “The extent of dysfunctionality was something I had not experienced before in any government.”

Sajid Javid has been talking more about power Dominic Cummings held in government decision-making.

If Cummings wanted something to happen, says Javid, he would know about it as then-Chancellor.

He says he would often get requests from the PM's office which, upon probing, were coming directly from Cummings, and not the PM himself.

Javid says that, based on his previous experience of government, was unexpected and unusual.

The inquiry has been hearing about the structure of cabinet and the team around the prime minister during January and February in 2020.

In his witness statement Javid writes that he believes Cabinet was designed to place Dominic Cummings and the PM as "decision makers" and to "centralise power in No 10 with a preference for loyalty over experience".

Javid confirms that it felt "very centralised" at the time and that at times this resulted in some ministers being excluded from making decisions.

Sajid Javid has been describing the inner workings of the cabinet in the run up and the start of the pandemic and says that at times it felt to him that key decisions were being made by Dominic Cummings, the PM's senior adviser, and not Boris Johnson himself.

Stay with us as we bring you more

Image source, Reuters

We are now hearing from Sajid Javid, who took over as health secretary in June 2021 after Hancock stepped down for breaking social distancing guidelines.

Javid previously served as home secretary under former Prime Minister Theresa May, and in 2019 was promoted to chancellor by Boris Johnson.

He lasted in that role for six months, resigning following tensions with the prime minister's then-advisor Dominic Cummings – who we heard from earlier in the inquiry.

In July 2022, he resigned as health secretary – alongside then chancellor and current PM Rishi Sunak, who we will hear from next month.

Former health secretary Sajid Javid is next to give evidence to the inquiry as it comes back after the break.

There are a few technical details to get out of the way first, including discussing the positions he has held in government, before currently becoming a backbench MP.

Joanne Cecil is the barrister asking the questions.

While the inquiry takes a short break, here is what we heard just a short while ago from Leslie Thomas KC from the Federation of Ethnic Minority Healthcare Organisations.

Thomas asked Harries whether she thought the government should have taken a more central role during the pandemic in supporting care workers, even though many of them were working in privately-owned instituions.

Harries replied by saying this was a question for government, not a medical adviser, though she believed the "government would say that they have and there was clearly a central role in pandemic".

But she said the model was not established well enough before the pandemic to ensure this central role could happen effectively.

Stay with us as we catch you up on the latest lines while the inquiry takes a quick break.

Danny Friendman KC who represents the National disabled people's organisation, asks why there was little planning of foreseeable risks for people with disabilities at the start of the pandemic.

Harries says that there was a lot of planning but accepts that they could have done better.

On shielding, she says that she wanted to ensure that intersectionalities such as learning disabilities, ethnicity and economic deprivation were measured using QCovid - a weighted cumulative risk tool.

Shielding was used to protect those at highest risk of severe illness if they caught COVID-19.

Friedman continues to press Harries on planning for people with Down's syndrome, asking also why the government took such a long time to issue guidance to add those with Down's syndrome to the extremely clinically vulnerable list.

Harries replies that the government acted on the guidance "immediately".

The representative for the Northern Ireland Covid Bereaved Families for Justice Campaign asks about the UK Health Security Agency, which took on much of health protection areas that had previously been the responsibility of Public Health England.

He says it has a predominantly "English" focus, with data focusing on England and the website only including references to England, rather than Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, and excluding links to relevant sites for those areas.

Harries says that this is "not a one-sided picture" and that data belongs to each nation so if it is not given to the body, they are not able to use it.

She says that throughout the pandemic, the data dashboard did get data from different nations and it was looked at routinely - but stressed that gathering and displaying data representatively was a two-way process.