Matt Hancock says school closures could have been avoided in January 2021 if the government had acted more swiftly on spiralling Covid cases
He tells the Covid inquiry that he argued introducing restrictions later would mean "a tougher lockdown with more economic damage"
Hancock also accepts "transgressions" in his personal life may have impacted the public's confidence in Covid rules
He resigned as health secretary in June 2021 after footage emerged of him kissing aide Gina Coladangelo
Elsewhere, Hancock says he was "in despair" when the government announced a tier system in England, which it "knew would not work"
He says this was because local politicians were "under significant pressure" not to accept the measures
Yesterday he said that entering lockdown three weeks earlier would have cut deaths in the first Covid wave by 90%
Thank you for joining our coverage of Matt Hancock's questioning. The inquiry is done for the day but Hancock will be back on the stand again tomorrow at 10:00.
And if you missed any of it, you can catch up on everything that happened today here.
This page was edited by Nadia Ragozhina and Nathan Williams.
Your writers were Imogen James, Thomas Mackintosh, Becky Morton, Pia Harold and Tara Mewawalla.
Matt Hancock has been sat in the inquiry giving evidence for the last few hours. He is due back tomorrow, but for now let's have a look back at some key moments from today.
Jim Reed
Health reporter
Just before the end of that session, there was a debate about circuit breaker lockdowns.
This was something the Sage group of scientific advisers said the government should consider in September 2020 as Covid cases were rising.
The idea was to lock down for a short period of time - maybe two or three weeks - to reduce transmission and relieve pressure on the NHS going into the winter.
In the end the Westminster government decided not to go ahead.
Instead some lighter touch restrictions - closing pubs early for example - were put in place before the tiers system of regional controls was adopted across England on 14 October.
Hancock said he was not convinced about the circuit breaker proposal on two grounds: he didn't think two weeks was long enough to have a major effect, and he felt the prospect of repeated mini lockdowns risked losing public confidence.
In Wales a "fire break" lockdown was put in place from 23 October 2020.
Cases did not drop dramatically as a result, although some critics have said that the decision was left too late and the virus was already spreading too quickly by that point.
Before wrapping up for the day, Hugo Keith KC talks about rising case rates of coronavirus in autumn 2020 and asks whether Matt Hancock was asking for a shorter lock down called a "circuit breaker" or for a longer national lockdown.
"My position was to argue for stronger local lockdown measures with a tier system," Hancock says - reflecting on time during September of that year.
He expresses his "frustration" of it taking a month to get his idea through and that the top tier was not enough to get the R-rate below one.
By October, Hancock tells the inquiry he was in favour of tougher measures to keep the R-rate below one and was not in favour or convinced of the so-called circuit breaker.
"It was too short to have any effect," he says adding in his view repeat circuit breakers would not be popular politically or publicly.
The inquiry has finished for the day.
Hancock's evidence will continue tomorrow.
Stay with us as we catch you up on the last few lines from today's hearing.
We're in autumn 2020 now - and Keith is asking Hancock about the PM's approach to the argument about being cautious versus opening up.
Hancock suggests Johnson "felt keenly" both sides of the argument - for the protection of health, and the protection of liberty and the economy.
Keith again brings up Hancock's book - Pandemic diaries - and points to a 26 August entry which describes the PM's "chaotic lurching".
Pressed about the PM's behaviour again, Hancock says: "There are different degrees of diplomacy to which you can answer the same question."
The inquiry is seeing evidence from Whatsapp now, between Hancock and Simon Case.
In it, Hancock wrote that they'd had feedback that Eat Out to Help Out was causing issues in the government's "intervention areas" but they'd "kept it out of the news".
He also wrote that they had been "protecting" the Treasury "in the comms".
Hancock tells the inquiry now that he abided by "collective responsibility".
Despite being encouraged by journalists to criticise the chancellor, he says he believes government is a "team effort" and didn't want a public row.
Matt Hancock says he did not know in advance about the Eat Out to Help Out scheme which was announced in the summer of 2020.
Hugo Keith KC emphasises Hancock has presented himself to the inquiry as someone who is "on the side of caution".
"Did you express serious reservations about the scheme? Keith asks Hancock
"Once it was announced, it was a done deal, it was government policy," Hancock answers.
"I expressed caution and argued very extensively against its extension at the end of August. I argued it should not be extended."
But, he says however there has been undue focus on that one policy - Hancock tells the inquiry what matters is the overall set of measures.
Moving onto devolved administrations now.
Hugo Keith KC says in Hancock's witness statement, he referred to the Scottish Government taking different positions on a political and presentational level.
Hancock now tells the inquiry that occasionally there would be an agreement but that someone in the Scottish Government would go and announce it sooner, or take slightly different decisions for "presentational" reasons.
He adds that he didn't think it made sense to make different decisions given that Great Britain is an island.
Jim Reed
Health reporter
One in three of the Covid deaths in the first wave of the pandemic occured in care homes.
One major problem was the nature of employment in the industry, with many agency care staff often rotating between a number of different residential homes.
The inquiry was just shown another diary entry from the government's chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance.
"Chris Whitty now says people moving between care homes important," he wrote on 15 May 2020.
"(I raised that and got told off by Matt Hancock a couple of weeks ago - again!)"
Hancock is asked about that message and whether he ignored that warning about the problem.
He says it was not a "fair reflection" of his position and he would never "tell off" Vallance in that way.
He says the government was having to balance the "imperative to reduce transmission" with the need to have enough staff to care for vulnerable elderly residents.
"These two difficult considerations were in conflict [and] it is not reasonable to just take one side of that argument, you have to take both into account," he adds.
Keith brings up a discussion between Hancock and one of his advisers during the pandemic, Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, who said there may have been "issues" with telling the PM care homes had been "locked down" before the rest of the country.
Hancock argues that the debate was around what you mean by "lockdown" - it depends whether you characterise the measures imposed on 13 March as a "lockdown" or not.
The lawyer explains that these measures included advising care home providers to ask no one to visit who had suspected Covid-19 or was unwell, to review visiting policy, to keep contractors to a minimum and to encourage good hand hygiene.
"In no universe," the lawyer says, "could those measures possibly be described as locking down the care homes."
"I think that's what Jamie was trying to tell me," concedes Hancock.
The conversation continues hearing about care homes and Keith quotes Hancock from a press conference in May 2020.
"Right from the start we've tried to throw a protective ring around care homes," Hancock had said at the time.
Keith asks if Hancock acknowledges that the phrase - protective ring - was open to interpretation.
He suggests that it gave the impression there was a barrier, whether in terms of finance, testing or discharge within the care sector.
Hancock tells the inquiry that they wanted to make it clear that they were trying to protect care homes. He explains that's why he had said in the press conference that they had put £3 billion into the care sector in March and April 2020, and had given free PPE to care homes and put in place controls.
However, Keith quotes Professor Van Tam, the former deputy medical officer for England: "My view is a ring is a circle without a break in it."
Hancock concedes to Keith, and admits that their protections did not form an unbroken circle around the care home sector.
"Van Tam right about care home protective ring" - Matt Hancock
The inquiry moves on to care homes.
Keith reminds the inquiry that on 19 March, the government issued the hospital discharge requirements which meant patients began to be moved to care homes when it was "medically okay" to do so.
He asks whether those discharges were in any way contingent upon a negative test being applied to the patient.
Hancock replies that in March that wasn't the case.
Keith asks whether any assurances were given that testing would be in place from that date onwards.
Hancock says, simply: "We didn't have enough tests".
Hugo Keith KC has moved on and the inquiry now hears about the goal of Covid 100,000 tests a day that was set up to be achieved by the end of April 2020.
Keith says it was impressive to ramp up the testing from 10k a day in March to 100k a day in April.
The lawyer asks if there was a worry that the focus on the end of April may have taken focus away from other areas.
Hancock rejects this criticism.
He says that the tests were needed and he wanted to "galvanise" the system.
Hancock adds that it was the target that helped the massive expansion and rejects that there was some "creative accounting" over the counting of the tests.
Matt Hancock outlines what he feels is a "vital lesson for the future" - the UK needing a better testing system.
"I am worried that is not quite there right now," Hancock tells the inquiry as he voices his concerns about available testing capacity for future pandemics.
Image source, Crown CopyrightThe inquiry lawyer turns to ask Hancock why Public Health England (PHE) was disbanded in the middle of the pandemic.
While he describes PHE doing a "superb job", especially on research and developing the test in a short time, Hancock says there were two main reasons PHE was replaced by UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).
The first - the capacity to scale, he says, was not there. The contact tracing system was based on "top quality experts" when what we needed was a "call-centre, Henry Ford, high volume" contact tracing system.
He says he was "frustrated" by the fact PHE "would not engage any private commercial entity".
Hancock also claims PHE viewed a "small" number of universities, hospital bases and some PHE labs as enough for production - but that this was, in his view, "not scalable" and the commercial sector needed to be engaged.
The second reason, according to him, is that PHE had two goals: health improvement (e.g. reducing smoking) as well as tackling communicable diseases (like Covid).
He suggests this was not conducive to successful work during the pandemic.
Nick Triggle
Health Correspondent
The inquiry has waded into one of the biggest questions it faces: could lockdown have been avoided?
Lockdown was announced on 23 March 2020. But a week before a set of voluntary measures were introduced, including asking the public to stay at home for 14 days if they - or anyone in their household - had Covid symptoms.
They were also advised to stop non-essential contact and all unnecessary travel.
Many have wondered whether those earlier, less restrictive measures were enough.
There was some emerging evidence to suggest social interactions had started dropping enough to get the R below 1, which would mean the epidemic would no longer grow.
But with only a few days of data the scientists were not completely confident, as Professor Sir Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, admitted in his testimony last week.
And with warnings the NHS would soon be overwhelmed, the government – and its advisers – were not prepared to wait.
Hancock says he believes that decision was right, adding the measures announced on 16 March were not enough.
We will now never know for sure. And what is certain is that the more stringent measures will have brought the peak down more quickly.
But, of course, they arguably came with greater indirect consequences in terms of mental health, education, the economy and wider wellbeing.
Matt Hancock tells the inquiry that nobody knew what an overwhelmed NHS would look like but that it would have been "catastrophic".
The inquiry lawyer presents evidence that shows that it was becoming obvious, at the end of March 2020, that there was a fear that the NHS would "inevitably" become overwhelmed if something wasn't done about the number of cases and deaths.
Hancock says that he was determined to ensure that everyone would still be able to get access to treatment. He says he also pushed for the expansion of the physical capacity and effective staffing of the NHS.
Pete Saull
Political Correspondent
Image source, PA MediaMatt Hancock is the most senior decision maker to admit that the government could, and should, have locked down earlier.
Three weeks earlier, to be precise.
The former health secretary stressed that he was speaking with the benefit of hindsight, but he suggested that thousands of lives could have been saved as a result.
Of course Matt Hancock is no longer a minister, and will be standing down as an MP at the general election.
Others who were in power at the time may well disagree with his comments.
But the timing of that first lockdown, which eventually came on the 23 March 2020, is of paramount importance to the inquiry.
And Matt Hancock has poured salt on what is still an open wound for a government desperately trying to move on from the past.
Stay with us as we continue bringing you all the lines and analysis.