Several major decisions were taken in mid-March, when more stringent measures – such as the closure of schools – were taken. Inquiry lawyer Hugo Keith KC asks Michael Gove whether he had any dealing with Prime Minister Boris Johnson during that week.

Gove says the PM found taking these decisions difficult, as “a decision to restrict freedoms in an unprecedented way went against his instincts and the principles that governed his political outlook”.

I believe the evidence was clear that such decisions to limit public liberties were “unavoidable”, Gove says.

Hugo Keith KC, counsel to the inquiry, asks Gove what drove a change in government strategy over the weekend of 14 and 15 March 2020.

Gove says there was a "convergence of thinking" from different institutions and individuals "about a need to act".

"What weighed with me, were the numbers," he says.

Gove says on that weekend Health Secretary Matt Hancock was "keen on the exercise greater of caution when it came to dealing with virus" and an "advocate for very uncomfortable restrictions of civil liberty" in order to deal with the health emergency.

The lawyer presses him, asking if he has seen any emails from the Department for Health to Boris Johnson saying "we're behind the curve, we've missed a trick here".

"No," says Gove, adding that he remembers the "secretary of state was of that view".

Hugo Keith KC now shows a screenshot from a WhatsApp conversation between Gove and Dominic Cummings, who was the senior adviser to then prime minister Boris Johnson.

The exchange, from 4 March 2020, begins with a message from Gove, which reads:

Gove apologises for the language used and says he was "concerned at that stage" about the Cabinet Office overall, including its dealing with Covid.

He adds that he "wanted to alert [Cummings] to the scale of the change necessary" at the department.

Lawyer Hugo Keith KC says Gove sent an email on 10 March 2020 with “very good” questions to then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock and the prime minister's adviser Dominic Cummings about important issues.

These included resilience, the hospitality sector, people with mild symptoms, intensive care capacity, and equipment.

He puts it to Gove that this indicates these questions were not being “adequately addressed” in government.

Gove replies that the email followed on from an earlier Cobra meeting of senior officials, and these were questions "consequent" on issues raised the previous day.

He says the most “timely and efficacious way of driving change was to email both the health secretary and the prime minister’s principal adviser direct".

Hugo Keith KC, counsel to the inquiry, asks Michael Gove why nobody in the early Cobra meetings pressed England's chief medical officer Chris Whitty, on what needed to be done to stop the virus spreading.

Gove says the government accepted that "the broad view at the time" from Whitty and others was "there was a limit" to what could be done to contain the spread.

He says lockdown measures were unprecedented and "the public would not endure them for long".

Gove continues by saying that hand-washing advice was not enough - and that the government needed to look at measures in other countries, such as Hong Kong and Singapore.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson chaired Cobra – a high-level government crisis meeting – in early March 2020.

Inquiry lawyer Hugo Keith KC asks if he should have chaired it earlier to give the impression the crisis was being taken seriously?

Gove replies that the meeting on 2 March was "wise and right".

That meeting was told that there was "sustained community transmission" in France and Germany, Keith says.

The UK’s coronavirus action plan - which is shown on the screen - focused on containing the virus.

Gove is asked if he knew at that stage the "virus was in the UK and that it was spreading".

He says there was a "dawning realisation" that it was, and that moving from trying to contain the virus to delaying its spread in the country was becoming "more and more imperative".

After a short break, Michael Gove - who was both minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster during the pandemic - is back and answering questions.

Hugo Keith KC, the counsel to the inquiry, asks Gove to list the issues of "dysfunctionality" at the heart of central government at the time.

Gove says he believes "we were too slow to lock down initially in March [2020]", adding that he also thought "we should have taken stricter measures before we decided to do so late in October".

He says the approach to testing, was "not as rigorously thought through as they might have been".

Gove also says the government "didn't pay enough attention to children and vulnerable children" and concludes by saying the approach towards PPE [personal protective equipment] procurement "deserves, at the very least, a reflection".

Some strong language is being broadcast on the live feed from the inquiry as messages are read out in evidence.

This is because the lead counsel to the inquiry has decided that this evidence is pertinent to its aim of examining the UK’s response to the pandemic, and trying to learn lessons for the future.

While the BBC would not normally broadcast such strong language, we believe there is a clear public interest in reporting the inquiry's proceedings in full.

Gove wades in on origins of Covidpublished at 11:54 Greenwich Mean Time 28 November 2023

11:54 GMT 28 November 2023

Jim Reed
Health reporter

Where and how the Covid virus - Sars-CoV-2 - originated is still a matter of intense scientific debate.

Nearly four years on from those first cases in Wuhan, central China, there are two main schools of thought.

The first, still backed by many scientists, is that it leapt across the species barrier from animals to humans.

The second - and more controversial - is that the virus was accidentally leaked by a laboratory which was carrying out research into similar viruses.

Michael Gove just appeared to wade into that debate in his evidence.

"There is a significant body of judgement that believes that the virus itself was manmade and that presents a set of challenges," he said.

He was cut off very quickly by the person asking the questions, Hugo Keith KC.

"It forms no part of the terms of reference of this inquiry to address that somewhat divisive issue, so we're not going to go there," Gove was told.

Gove is shown a document, dated 28 February 2020, which was sent to the prime minister on domestic plans on Covid and had "a full action plan" that the letter states Matt Hancock wanted to publish.

The letter states the Civil Contingencies Secretariat - the part of the Cabinet Office responsible for planning for emergencies - was saying Covid looked increasingly likely to become a global pandemic.

Asked if he was privy to the document Gove says: "I appear to be on the 'cc' list but I am not certain, I would have to check with my office that I actually received this document in this form."

When asked if he thought the absence of detailed infection control plans from the document was significant, he says: "I think it was only the week after that - the week commencing 9 or 10 March - that my concerns began to mount significantly."

Gove is now asked about his view of the danger overacting at end of February 2020.

He replies: "I do not believe it was at the end of February, I believe it was a little bit later... that I became convinced that the danger was underreacting."

Gove says that "lockdown was an unprecedent departure for a country like the United Kingdom with its traditions of liberty".

Normally only those visibly infected would be isolated, he says, and "not an entire population being locked down".

"It was very, very significant step - I believe right and justified given the nature of the virus – but nevertheless a momentous one."

Hugo Keith KC, counsel to the inquiry, asks if it was apparent there was no debate about infection control and proposals for dealing with the management of dead bodies.

"What was your reaction?" he adds.

Gove says he wouldn't want to overstate his knowledge, but adds that when he spoke to senior civil servant Katharine Hammond the issue of excess death management was "sombre, chilling, scary".

Hammond was the director of the Cabinet Office team in charge of planning for emergencies.

Keith asks Gove what the "nuts and bolts" of the plan for stopping the spread of virus were

Gove says it was to use testing and contact tracing and to "seek to isolate the infected".

He agrees that beyond the first few hundred cases, there was no system for testing and contact tracing.

A little while ago, Michael Gove apologised for the "mistakes that were made by the government" during the pandemic.

Watch his apology in full in this short clip below:

Hugh Pym
Health editor

Michael Gove tells the inquiry he has a “high opinion” of former Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who he says had a desire “to rise to the occasion” with some of his briefings to the cabinet in the pandemic.

Hancock has been strongly criticised by some witnesses at the inquiry, including Dominic Cummings and the former senior civil servants Mark Sedwill and Helen MacNamara.

But there have been briefings to some newspapers by “allies” of Hancock that he is being made a scapegoat by others keen to shift the blame for government failings during the crisis.

The top civil servant at the Department of Health, Christopher Wormald, and the former head of NHS England, Lord Stevens, both told the inquiry they did not think Hancock was “untruthful” during the crisis.

He will no doubt face rigorous questioning when he appears at the inquiry later this week.

Hancock will then have his chance to answer his critics and give his own version of events - we'll be covering that live too so do join us for that.

WhatsApp messages between senior officials have featured heavily in this inquiry so far - and they're turning to them again now.

Gove says it is understandable that people will express their anger and frustration on WhatsApp in the heat of the moment – “that is human”.

He also adds that “too much was asked” of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), and that other parts of government should have stepped up and taken responsibility.

It is admirable that the DHSC wanted to “rise to the occasion” and “wished not to evade responsibility” during the pandemic, he says. But there should have “arguably a greater degree of challenge” and at an earlier stage.

Gove says he used emergency Cobra meetings to try to ensure that the DHSC sought the help of other departments.

Gove wanted to land apology early onpublished at 10:54 Greenwich Mean Time 28 November 2023

10:54 GMT 28 November 2023

Jim Reed
Health reporter

Michael Gove clearly wanted to land that apology at the start of his testimony today.

"I want to apologise to the victims, who endured so much pain [and] the families who endured so much loss as a result of the mistakes that were made by government in response to the pandemic," he said.

"As a minister, responsible for the Cabinet Office, and who was also close to many of the decisions that were made, I must take my share of responsibility for that."

It's the first time a government minister in this inquiry has apologised in that way for any mistakes made during Covid itself.

In module one, former Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he was “profoundly sorry” for his part in mistakes in the planning for a pandemic before the virus hit. The inquiry was looking into how well prepared the UK was for a pandemic at that point.

Former Downing Street adviser Dominic Cummings has also repeatedly said that mistakes were made by ministers and officials.

"I think the handling of it was a disaster... and I very much regret and have already apologised for how badly No 10 handled the whole thing," he said in his evidence last month.

Gove says he'd argue that Boris Johnson's government, Brexit and the vaccine roll out were "executed well".

He concedes, however, that in "other areas it'd be quite wrong to award ourselves high marks".

The inquiry's lawyer Hugo Keith pushes on this, pointing to a "dysfunctional element" in the Cabinet Office and inside No 10.

Gove says governments across the world had to "scramble to appreciate quite how devastating this virus would be".

"So, of course, mistakes and errors were made by the UK government", some of which were "unique", he adds.

Hugo Keith KC says the inquiry has heard a lot of evidence highlighting “serious systemic issues”, such as "toxicity" and the "behaviour of people in No 10".

"That can't have been hidden from you, can it?" he asks Gove.

Gove replies that No 10 has always had “strong personalities” which often clash.

He says Boris Johnson’s government was composed of these strong personalities, whose assertiveness had delivered an election victory and ended the logjam following Brexit.

“You're never going to get a perfect team of personalities […] among whom there is perfect harmony,” he says.

The inquiry's lawyer continues to push Gove on the Cabinet Office, which he says has been described as "dysfunctional, bloated, with too many senior levels".

"Why do you think that the Cabinet Office came to be in such a state?" he asks.

Gove points to a "tendency among successive prime ministers to shove in responsibility into the Cabinet Office that does not fit in easily elsewhere".

He adds the department becomes "a sort of Mary Poppins bag" in which PMs "shove things to be dealt with by the governments".

He says he would not blame the "dysfunction" on civil servants, who he described as the "finest" in the country.

He adds it was instead a consequence of responsibilities being added "in a piecemeal and cumulative way".

Gove says: "I want to take this opportunity to apologise to the families who endured so much loss" because of the "mistakes" government made during the pandemic.

As a senior minister at the time, he says: "I must take my share of responsibility for that".

"Politicians are human beings. We are fallible, we make mistakes and we make errors. I am sure that the inquiry will have an opportunity to look in detail at many of the errors that I and others made."