Image source, EPA

Dame Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), began her evidence at the end of yesterday’s session. Here’s a reminder of what she said:

• Harries, who appeared at daily Covid briefings from Downing Street during the pandemic, told the inquiry her role was not about defending government policy, but as "somebody to try and support public understanding”
• She said standing next to the PM at No 10 was not a position she’d ever imagined being in, adding that Covid was a “very, very frightening time for many”
• Asked about comments she made at a press conference in April 2020, where she said the UK was "very highly prepared" for the pandemic, she said the claim felt wrong "in retrospect"
• Harries was asked about comments she made in March 2020 when she said "the country has a perfectly adequate supply of PPE at the moment"
• She said she had "no direct responsibility for PPE at all” and apologised soon after

Nadia Ragozhina
Live reporter

Image source, PA Media

Hello and thank you for joining us again as we get ready to bring you all the latest from today's Covid inquiry hearings.

Yesterday the day finished with former deputy chief medical officer Professor Dame Jenny Harries giving evidence. She will resume her testimony at 10:00 GMT today.

Harries was pressed on comments she made at a Downing Street press conference in April 2020 when she said the UK was a "very highly prepared" for the pandemic.

The claim felt wrong "in retrospect", she said, and had been based on an "external objective assessment".

On Tuesday morning the inquiry heard from Cabinet minister Michael Gove, who disputed claims Boris Johnson was "incapable of making decisions" about lockdowns during the pandemic.

Gove also apologised to victims and bereaved families for the government's "mistakes" during the pandemic, and said he “must take my share of responsibility for that".

Read more here.

Image source, Piranha Photography

After another busy day at the Covid inquiry, we're bring our live coverage to a close.

For the most part, we heard from Michael Gove - who painted a picture of his time at the heart of government as it took those crucial decisions during the pandemic.

The former Cabinet Office minister had a lot to say on a whole host of matters - which you can read a quick summary of here.

Next came a brief appearance from Prof Dame Jenny Harries, head of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).

She's back giving evidence from 10:00 GMT tomorrow, followed by former cabinet ministers Sajid Javid and Dominic Raab - we'll be following it all live again here.

Image source, PA Media

We'll be hearing more from Professor Dame Jenny Harries in the morning, but here's a quick recap of what she said in the last hour of today's session:

• Harries became a familiar face at daily Covid briefings from Downing Street during the pandemic. She said this had not been a position she had ever imagined being in and that her role was not about defending government policy
• She was asked about comments early in the pandemic where she said the UK "has a perfectly adequate supply of PPE at the moment"
• She told the inquiry that she was not responsible for PPE but reminds the inquiry of an apology she made soon after
• Harries also said that her comments that the UK was a "very highly prepared country" for the pandemic feels wrong "in retrospect"
• She said her comments were based on an "external objective assessment", which scored the UK second out of 100 countries

Image source, EPA

And with that final question on testing, Professor Dame Jenny Harries' evidence session finishes for the day.

She will take the stand again at 10:00 GMT tomorrow morning.

Also on Wednesday, we'll be hearing evidence from Sajid Javid, who was health secretary from June 2021 to July 2022, and Dominic Raab, former deputy PM and foreign secretary.

We have some more analysis to come - so stick with us.

Harries says she encouraged the World Health Organization’s message of "test, test, test" early on in the pandemic.

Many countries had not recorded any Covid cases at the time, which is why she backed the call to test in April 2020.

However, at this time the UK was struggling to test everyone because “at this point we had no more tests”, she says.

Inquiry lawyer Andrew O'Connor KC asks why, if tests had run out, Harries said that testing was not an appropriate intervention for the UK on 26 March 2020.

Harries says this was for two reasons. Firstly, because she wanted people whose loved ones were in hospital to be assured they would be tested.

Secondly, there is a point “where you no longer test and trace because the peak of the pandemic rises so quickly that it becomes unmanageable”.

A document on the UK's preparations for a pandemic is shown to the inquiry, in which Harries refers to a pandemic influenza stockpile as a mark of a "very highly prepared country".

"Why did you do that?" lawyer Andrew O'Connor KC asks.

Harries replies that this was not her own assessment, "but one of an external objective assessment", which scored the UK second out of 100 countries.

But she says "in retrospect it feels wrong".

O'Connor says these assessments were made before the pandemic, and that by the time the comments were made in April when it had already been demonstrated "how far wide of the mark" they had been.

Harries says: "We were clearly not in an exemplary position then."

Harries is now asked about personal protective equipment, better known as PPE.

As Covid spread, urgent demand for PPE led to severely stretched supply chains.

Harries is asked about comments she made in March 2020 when she said "the country has a perfectly adequate supply of PPE at the moment".

Harries says she had "no direct responsibility for PPE at all" and had to rely on information provided to her.

She says she was told that a new supply system for getting PPE around the country was resolved "and that turned out to not be the case".

"In fact I apologised as soon as I could when I was next on the stand...which is a relatively unusual thing to do from a political stand but it was something I felt I needed to do," she says.

Harries is asked about comparisons made in March 2020 between the impact of the pandemic in the UK and in Italy - which was the first European country to be badly hit by the virus.

Inquiry lawyer Andrew O'Connor KC quotes ex-deputy cabinet secretary Helen McNamara who said in her evidence there was a feeling in Downing Street that the Italians were overreacting.

O'Connor shows an email from Harries in which she said "if you do not have good command and control systems in relation to health systems in your country, eg Italy, you are probably starting from a rubbish position, but in the UK that doesn't apply".

Does your email mean you were guilty of overconfidence at this stage, the lawyer asks her.

Harries replies that she may have “read too much” into the difference in the health systems of the UK and Italy. She says she accounted for some of the problems Italy was having as due to the way its system was organised "rather than the fact, actually, that the virus was going to be so problematic".

Harries says she always tried to give "right messages to give to the public".

She is asked if she was ever trying to protect the public and to avoid telling them all the "bad news" and put a "positive spin" on events.

Harries says this was a "very, very frightening time for many members of the public".

She says it was important to "reduce what you're saying in ways that are simpler and less scientifically detailed but nevertheless gets the key public health message across".

Image source, Getty Images

Back to Dame Jenny Harries, who says the process of standing at No 10 next to the prime minister or chancellor in the middle of a global pandemic was “something that clearly I had not expected before”.

She says her role was not about defending government policy.

"I will not have been in the same meetings as [England's chief medical officer Chris Whitty] would have been, or other colleagues making strategic decisions; and yet it may well be me standing on the podium," she says.

Harries says her role was that of an adviser, and as "somebody to try and support public understanding”.

Jim Reed
Health reporter

A little earlier was an important intervention by the inquiry chair Baroness Hallett.

She thanked Michael Gove when he finished giving evidence, and said she wanted to assure him that she "doesn't have any settled views yet".

"I consider all the evidence: oral evidence, written evidence, and not just the small section of the evidence like WhatsApp messages that some sections of the media have been focusing on," she said.

The inquiry has been criticised by some press commentators - in part for focusing on the rows and disagreements in Downing Street during the pandemic.

The Daily Mail columnist Quentin Letts, for example, described it as a grotesque circus, external and said it had become "stinkingly political".

Inquiry counsel Andrew O'Connor KC, who's asking the questions, asks Harries first about an interview she gave to the Telegraph newspaper, external on 24 September 2023.

In the article, Harries is quoted as saying:

The key, she says, is to be transparent about the risks and build trust with the public.

Harries says her comments were based "particularly around data", adding that the UKHSA is now trying to build dashboards so people can see what's happening and make their own choices.

She says the public were "brilliant during pandemic and they complied often with mandated requirements".

But she adds with the Omicron Covid variant there ware no mandated requirements at the time but people could see the data and "then they took actions themselves".

Asked if next time if we can get the data right the same same severity of mandatory measures, Harries says it wouldn't apply to all crisis like the Ebola virus.

Professor Dame Jenny Harries has been sworn in and is giving her evidence.

A familiar face from the pandemic briefings, she is the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and a former deputy chief medical officer.

She previously served on the Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which recommends which vaccines should be given to the public, and has worked on the UK's response to Covid, Ebola, Zika, mpox, Mers and the Novichok attacks.

After five hours, Michael Gove has just finished giving evidence. Here's a summary:

Lockdown Gove, like other witnesses, says "we were too slow to lock down" in March 2020, and should have taken stricter measures sooner ahead of the second lockdown at the end of 2020.

Defending Johnson Gove disputed claims Boris Johnson was "incapable of making decisions" on lockdowns, and said: "I don’t think one can single out the prime minister at the time for criticism. We all deserve our share - retrospectively - of criticism."

An apology Gove began his evidence by apologising to the victims and families "who endured so much loss" because of "mistakes" made by the government in the pandemic. Watch his apology in the video above.

Tier system Gove says the system of having tighter restrictions in some areas of England for parts of the pandemic in late 2020 was "inherently" flawed, and he was "sceptical about its efficacy".

Stay at home, vs stay alert Gove says the Scottish government wasn't told in advance about the change in the UK's messaging from "stay at home" to "stay alert". But he defended this, and said he didn't believe it caused any detriment to the handling of the pandemic.

Origins of Covid At one point, Gove noted there was a significant body of evidence that believes Covid was "man-made", only to be told the issue was not part of the inquiry's terms of reference. Since then, Downing Street has said the issue of Covid's origins is an issue for the World Health Organization.

Finally, Gove is asked about children and whether the government's decisions were taken from only an adult point of view.

The cabinet minister says the government did pay attention to schools, but that there was a trade off - the government was advised to close schools to cut the spread of the disease, but says he was concerned because that would disproportionately affect the most vulnerable children.

There was a particular concern for children at risk of abuse and neglect, Gove says, and that shutting down schools was one of the most difficult decisions.

"In policy there are always trade offs, and those trade offs can be very uncomfortable."

He also says former Education Secretary Gavin Williamson was involved in the key decisions that impacted children.

And that's the end of Gove's evidence for the day - next up is former deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries.

Next up, Michael Gove is pressed on support for disable people in the pandemic, and is shown an email from a Covid-19 taskforce meeting, sent on 29 October 2020.

It says that during a meeting that day of the Covid-O group - led by Michael Gove - a more ambitious package to support disabled people "in a slower time" had been agreed, compared with plans to give support to disproportionately impacted ethnic minority communities.

Asked why this was, Gove says it wasn't about a "hierarchy of need, but the preparedness of policy".

He says that if he "remembered rightly the government hadn't be as ready to deliver that support to people with disabilities".

Claire Mitchell KC, for the Scottish Covid Bereaved group, asks Gove if he agrees that the UK government had difficulty treating the devolved administrations as equal partners.

He replies: "No".

She says evidence has been heard that some decisions were made outside of Cobra meetings and then brought to those meetings for the devolved administrations to agree.

Gove says there were many occasions when representatives of the devolved administrations were involved before the cabinet.

"I should say the UK is not a federal state," he adds.

Cobra meetings, held throughout the pandemic, brought together a mixture of ministers and officials from relevant departments and agencies to coordinate the government's response to national emergencies.

Gove is asked about Wales' First Minister Mark Drakeford’s response to Boris Johnson’s comments during his witness statement, where the former PM said the devolved administrations needed to be “handled with care given the powers they have to diverge”.

Drakeford said it appeared to him that Johnson did not see devolved governments as equal partners, but like a "set of unruly unreliable adolescents whose judgements were flawed".

Asked if there were concerns that first ministers would either leak or act early on information, Gove says there were concerns to that because of one incident with a first minister early on, but didn't elaborate.

He added that it was “not a particularly significant concern in the grand scheme of things".

We're now hearing questions from Kirsten Heaven, from the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru group.

Referring to Boris Johnson's evidence to the inquiry, she says Johnson, in his view, said it was "optically wrong" for the UK prime minister to hold regular meetings with other devolved administration first ministers.

She asks Gove if he understood that Johnson was reluctant to meet the leaders and that this was "a deliberate choice made by him for largely presentational reasons".

Gove says the ex-PM also said it was for practical reasons.

He adds it seemed to him Johnson wanted "to divide responsibility and labour appropriately."