Back to Hancock's witness statement now.

The inquiry's lawyer says Hancock made the suggestion that the government could have applied a precautionary approach over asymptomatic transmission.

Hancock tells the inquiry that the scientific advice from Public Health England (PHE) during the early pandemic was that there wasn't a need to quarantine people being brought back from Wuhan in China.

He overruled this, Hancock says.

Until April 3, he said decision were taken on the PHE stance that there wasn't asymptomatic transmission.

Hugo Keith KC asks if asymptomatic transmission has been understood sooner, what measures could have been made available by the government?

Hancock replies it would have made a difference to prevention control in healthcare settings.

Hugo Keith KC says it was obvious from the lockdown in Italy and data from a cruise ship outbreak that there was "significant asymptomatic transmission".

He asks if Hancock agrees that by February 22 2020, there was "clear, asymptomatic transmission."

Hancock says no.

"I would say that with hindsight, that is now obvious."

But Keith is pressing him on this denial - Hancock's government received data in mid-February 2020 showing there were people showing no symptoms.

Hancock replies, saying he tried to get Public Health England to change their advice, but could not.

Counsel for the inquiry, Hugo Keith KC, comes back to his original question, saying:

• Hancock's book states he was told asymptomatic transmission was not applicable to Covid
• Hancock's statement says he regrets not pushing back harder against this idea
• And in Hancock's evidence today, he has acknowledged there were concerns of asymptomatic transmission

Keith makes the case that these cannot all be true.

Hancock insists that in late January he became aware of "anecdotal" evidence of asymptomatic transmission of Covid but that this was not strong enough evidence with which to formulate policy.

He says he was told the "reasonable" assumption was that Covid was transmitted in the same way as Sars.

Jim Reed
Health reporter, BBC News

We are into a deep, detailed discussion about asymptomatic transmission of the virus.

It took until April 2020 for the WHO and other organisations to confirm that Covid could potentially be spread by people without a fever, cough and other obvious symptoms.

Hancock said his "single greatest regret" is that he didn't push harder for the system as a whole to recognise that earlier.

Why is this so important?

If a virus is spread asymptomatically it is much harder to contain.

It means temperature controls and other checks at borders are much less effective, it makes contact tracing much more difficult, and it means social distancing and quarantine rules may need to be completely overhauled.

Previous forms of coronavirus - like Sars and Mers - which spread mainly in Asia and the Middle East, were generally only passed on by people who were clearly sick.

The realisation that Covid could be different was one of the major scientific findings of the early part of the pandemic.

Hugo Keith KC takes Matt Hancock back through a series of meetings in late January and early February as the virus spread from China to Europe - noting Germany in his questioning.

Hancock tells the inquiry he was aware from January and understood the implications of asymptomatic transmission and his recollection of events at that time is he kept on pushing on the question of this in January and February especially.

He says his "single greatest regret with hindsight" was not pushing this harder.

The inquiry has resumed after a short break and its lawyer, Hugo Keith KC, moves onto asymptomatic transmission.

He says that until you know of asymptomatic transmission, you can't work out what the full extent of the viral spread is.

In other words, if it was known that people with no symptoms could spread Covid, that would have changed the understanding of how widely the virus could spread.

The lawyer references Hancock's witness statement.

He quotes Hancock: "My single greatest regret, is not pushing harder for asymptomatic transmission to be the baseline assumption."

The inquiry is then presented with evidence on asymptomatic transmission showing how quickly advice was changing during the early stages of the pandemic.

All of this evidence, Keith says, suggests that the issue was whether or not there was a significant level of transmissibility in those showing no symptoms. This showed it was likely there was asymptomatic transmission, he says.

Hancock says it was frustrating to him at the time as he was aware of the concerns from early on.

When did Hancock tell Johnson to lock down?published at 11:32 Greenwich Mean Time 30 November 2023

11:32 GMT 30 November 2023

Jim Reed
Health reporter, BBC News

One interesting bit of information from that morning session was around the timing of the first lockdown.

Hancock has said that he first told the PM that a measure that radical would be needed on Friday 13 March.

That is relevant because, the following weekend, a series of meetings were held in Downing Street which put the country firmly on the path to imposing a full lockdown a week later on Monday 23 March.

We understand from other witnesses that Hancock was excluded from some of those No 10 meetings.

Dominic Cummings said in his witness statement that, at one point, he shut the door on Hancock to stop him entering Boris Johnson's study.

Lead counsel Hugo Keith KC seemed sceptical that the former health secretary was really ringing the alarm bell as early as 13 March.

He said there was no reference to that warning in Hancock's book, Pandemic Diaries, published in December last year.

Hancock said that information only "came to light" later when he was preparing to give evidence for this inquiry.

As we wait for the inquiry to resume after a short break, here's a reminder you can watch every moment by pressing Play at the top of this page.

If you can't see the icon, refresh your browser or reload this page on the BBC news app.

Hancock is again being pressed on whether the government had a plan to deal with the pandemic.

He points out that the government had a pandemic flu strategy, set out in 2011, and by early February 2020 it had a whole series of plans for different areas such as testing and vaccine development.

The former health secretary admits the expansion of testing did not go fast enough and he had to take action to address this.

But he repeats that there was a plan for tackling Covid, guided by the science, but his critique was that it was not "adequate".

The inquiry lawyer brings out Hancock's book - Pandemic Diaries, in which he says there is no mention under 13 March of Hancock telling the PM that he needed to call a lockdown.

Hancock and Keith go back and forth over this a few times and the former health secretary argues that he "didn't have full access to my papers" at the time of writing the book.

Instead, he claims, this piece of information came to light when he was preparing for this inquiry.

The inquiry lawyer asks him how sure he is this happened - "I can remember it," Hancock says, adding that there are records of discussions the following day in No. 10 on the matter which are "corroborating evidence".

The inquiry is taking a break.

Stay with us as we catch you up on a few lines we heard from the hearing before this pause.

Jim Reed
Health reporter, BBC News

In Matt Hancock's evidence so far he seems reluctant to directly blame individuals for any shortcomings or mistakes.

"I don't think it's fair to criticise people for making professional judgments at the time with hindsight, knowing what we know now," he said at one point.

One example was a decision, taken by then cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill, to delay a meeting of the government's Cobra emergency committee at the start of February 2020.

Hancock says he believed the original meeting was blocked because Sedwill did not want to take that significant step "unnecessarily".

There was also - according to Hancock - a concern it would be used simply for "communications purposes" - i.e. to show the Department of Health was taking action to combat the virus.

Hancock denied that and said he only wanted to "get the government machine moving".

He suggested that, with hindsight, the decision to delay the meeting for 48-hours was wrong, but it might have made sense to officials at the time.

Matt Hancock says he tried to alert the government to the dangers of Covid in January 2020, but was not taken seriously until mid-February.

The former health secretary said Cobra emergency meetings with ministers and civil servants should have been led from the centre at the time.

Hugh Pym
Health editor

Matt Hancock has set out his version of events in the early stages of the pandemic in 2020.

He has been accused by other witnesses of not sharing concerns with other parts of government about the potential danger of the virus.

It's been claimed that the Department of Health was not fit for purpose but was trying to take on too much.

But Mr Hancock has argued he tried from the middle of January to “wake up Whitehall” to the scale of the problem and that officials had to get on with preparations such as the shielding programme for the vulnerable.

He claims he wasn’t taken seriously till the middle of February.

Interestingly he argues that the “centre” should have chaired Cobra emergency meetings early on, the “centre” being code for then-PM Boris Johnson.

Image source, PA Media

Hancock again lists occasions where he believes his momentum for a response to Covid was slowed down - the cabinet secretary's "reluctance" to get a Cobra meeting - the emergency response committee - going and the delay to the publication of the action plan.

"I felt that I had to drive this thing forward," he says.

He refers to earlier witnesses in the inquiry thinking he was trying to convene a Cobra meeting for "communications" purposes, or for publicity.

And he says "people had good reasons at the time" to make the professional judgements they did - but that they were wrong.

He says that with hindsight, it is clear the whole government response should have been quicker, but that you have to remember the "fog of uncertainty" at the start of the pandemic.

The inquiry is now shown a text exchange between Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson on 7 March 2020, when the then-prime minister asks his health secretary if there is anything he can do to help.

In response, Hancock suggests it would be helpful for him to contribute to calls on the public for handwashing and to stay at home.

The inquiry's lawyer asks if this was not an opportunity for him to say to the PM, for example, that the government needed to get on top of the absence of real plans for infection control.

Hancock says that by this point, the PM, the Cabinet Office and No 10 were "wholly engaged", with Johnson chairing his first Cobra meeting on Covid on 2 March.

He adds that in the text exchange he did suggest there should be "a whole national effort".

Henry Zeffman
Chief political correspondent

A string of witnesses have used their appearances at the Covid inquiry to blame Matt Hancock for failures in the government’s handling of the pandemic.

Just minutes into today’s evidence and it’s clear that the former health secretary wants to fight back. And not just on the substance. He is arguing that the Department of Health and Social Care "rose to the challenge" of the pandemic.

But he is also arguing that the reason he has attracted so much of the blame from his colleagues is because of the “toxic culture” in government at the time.

In effect, he is arguing that the volley of criticism he has received is just another symptom of the intemperate climate in government during the pandemic - in contrast to what he claims was his own "can do", positive attitude.

Hancock goes on, discussing the need for a "whole government response" to future crises.

He says there are accusations that the health department "tried to do too much", "held too much within the department" or "didn't get on with stuff".

On the contrary, he says the department was "very, very busy" but the response should have been better shared.

He argues, for a crisis of the scale - "a whole of society crisis" - a model where one government department leads does not work.

He adds that if the government's emergency response committee Cobra had "embraced the challenge" of the pandemic earlier, instead of, as Hancock puts it, thinking he was overreacting, the response could have been better.

The inquiry's lawyer references claims from Patrick Vallance's diaries and other officials that in February and March Hancock was "desperate to own and lead" and was reluctant to ask the central Cabinet Office for help.

He asks if in the early stages of the pandemic the Department of Health failed to tell the government how bad the situation was.

Hancock replies that this is "completely the wrong way round" and that from mid-January the department was trying to "wake up Whitehall to the scale of the problem".

He argues his department alone couldn't address everything, citing issues such as shutting schools, and that the pandemic should have been "led from the centre earlier".

Hancock claims his department tried to make this happen but "were on occasions blocked" or not taken seriously.

He says getting the machine at the centre of government up and running was "incredibly hard" and it wasn't until the end of February that things started to move.

Hancock continues to defend the department of health, arguing it was "doing things no-one else was".

He points to shielding the vulnerable, which he said his team took initial responsibility for when it should have been the job of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC)

However, he says DLUHC ultimately did a good supporting those who were required to shield from Covid.

Hancock goes on to say there was a "cross-government effort" led by a department outside of health, but he had to commission that work.

School and non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) came under the health department, he adds.

"The department, yes, had a lot to do but... because the rest of Whitehall was slow getting going, we had to get up there and do it."