As Letwin spoke about devolved nations, he mentioned Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Baroness Hallett asks, "did the same apply to Wales?"

Letwin says there was one occasion he had a relationship with Wales which was in relation to flooding.

"They were present at the relevant Cobra meetings by video, we had a perfectly working relationship.

"As it happens, in the other cases I was dealing with, Wales was not a particularly material issue."

Letwin is asked about his position on working relationships with the devolved administrations, as a UK minister, in the field of civil contingencies.

He says resilience planning was an England exercise and critical infrastructure was a devolved matter.

However, he says when handling specific crisis such as flooding or Ebola, they had repeated involvement with devolved nations in Cobra and offline he had continuous conversations.

He says while there were some friction with Scotland over constitutional issues over independence, there was no friction over these civil issues.

Keith says pandemics don't recognise borders, and asks if Letwin would agree if a proper system to deal with emergency preparedness must have a joined up response across the UK.

Letwin says: "Yes, that's particularly true with biological agents".

Baroness Hallett asks Letwin if the head of resilience would be "an independent person" or "somebody ministerial".

Letwin says it is his view that "it's very important that the person heading the work have direct access to the prime minister".

He adds that would more easily done from "within the centre of government".

But Letwin says it isn't just a question of having a minister. He says there should be a minister and a head of resilience who is parallel in stature to the national security advisor.

"If you had that combination of a full time senior cabinet minister for resilience exclusively and a head of resilience," he continues, it would work better.

Hugo Keith QC says that anyone tasked with responding locally to preparing for emergencies and responding to them would have to be familiar with cabinet office-produced documents, emphasising this entails being familiar with huge amount of paperwork.

Keith asks if there needs to be a radical rewrite of the policy strategy planning documentation?

"It's not just a case, it obviously needs to happen," Letwin says.

He says that if it happens without a central team under a head of resilience with direct access to the prime minister and his national security advisor, it would be a wasted effort because you would go through countless consultations around Whitehall.

You can watch every moment of the Covid inquiry by pressing the Play icon at the top of this page.

If you can't see the play button please refresh your browser or reload this page on the BBC news app.

Keith is now referring to an article Letwin wrote in 2015 called, "Five principles for getting things done in Whitehall."

The first principle says that the volume of a document is usually in inverse proportion to effectiveness. The longer the document is at legislation, the less effective it is for advising ministers, getting results or communicating with the public.

Keith asks what view Letwin forms about the number of policy and guidance documents, and the sheer amount of paperwork.

Letwin says "I formed the view that it was highly counterproductive."

"It was an absolute rule of mine that if I couldn't get it on one page, the maximum was two."

However, he says unfortunately he was responsible for receiving every public-facing document produced by the government.

"Some of them were many times longer than the material warranted and I started the process of putting in three jars, green, yellow and red tags... so we could keep track of how many of these documents were ludicrously overweight and incomprehensible."

He added that he sent back the red ones, which were "catastrophic".

Matt Cole
Political reporter, at the Covid Inquiry

An interesting insight into the sign-off of government policy and planning from Oliver Letwin - especially how experts offer evaluated plans to ministers - in this case on resilience planning.

He said: "I was an entire amateur. I know nothing about the science of the spread of diseases so it was absurd that I could contradict or over-rule these experts.

"I should have said to myself not 'are they wrong' but 'have they asked the right questions', because an amateur can ask that.

"I didn't know enough to ask the right questions."

He also mentioned the "revolving door" of government positions... a point picked up on by inquiry chair Baroness Hallett - making a rare intervention.

The way government was structured could be a key point for the chair of the inquiry to consider when she makes her final report.

Letwin says a red team is needed, and Keith asks exactly what he means by a red team, and how can orthodoxy be challenged in future in the confines of a government system?

"It (unorthodoxy) can't be challenged in the confines of the normal bureaucratic system," Letwin says.

"Officials are just like the rest of us, they would like their careers to progress. If you're a member of a team and you start being a frightful nuisance it is not a career enhancing move, so they need to be separate."

He adds that they need to be accountable to a different person to the thing they're enquiring about.

"The crucial things is there needs to be 20-30 people with the relevant expertise... you want someone in the red team who is a plausible credible scientist."

Keith is discussing non-influenza pandemics.

He says it appears in the risk assessments that there was a "failure to consider multiple scenarios".

He adds that there was a tendency to think about stopping consequences happening as opposed with how to deal with them after.

Keith draws on Letwin's witness statement which says Letwin wanted to stop group thinking, and to input "red teams" to challenge the thinking.

Letwin says he doubts the right analysis is that it's a set of experts that got it all wrong, but it's more likely that the scientists all came to the conclusion that the most likely scenario was pandemic flu so that is where the attention was.

"If they had been focussed on impact, rather than cause, they might have observed that it was very likely that whatever particular virus it was that attacked us would require to be tested, to be traced, to have PPE associated with it, to have vaccines developed for it and so on."

He thinks catastrophe needed to be minimised instead of avoided.

Letwin is asked if there was no detailed consideration of pandemic influenza planning, or non-influenza pathogenic planning, between 2011 and 2016, after Letwin asked if it was an area that required personal attention.

"This was a role you yourself played no role in supervising?" Keith asks.

Letwin agrees he was not involved in this but checked from time to time with the chief scientist and chief medical officer they were content it was progressing.

However, he says it wasn't the case there were no other ministers dealing with it.

Hugo Keith KC has just asked Letwin to tell Covid inquiry Chair Baroness Hallett more about how he asked whether resilience planning was an area which required his personal attention and how the response said the country was well prepared.

Letwin says: "I don't exonerate myself."

He continues that he wanted to set up systematic reviews to see where the UK was not well prepared for a crisis.

He posed this to the Civil Contingencies Secretariat - which prepared and plans for emergencies.

"I was of course aware that the National Risk Register put pandemic flu high both on impact and on probability. So it was an obvious thig to put high on my review."

He told them to put it high on the list but they told him "that would be a mistake" in light of the upcoming Exercise Cygnus and Cygnet - a three-day simulation exercise into a hypothetical flu pandemic in 2016.

"It's absolutely not an excuse for a minister," he says because he did not have to follow advice. He says "it's a matter of lasting regret" that he didn't follow up on his concerns.

Hugo Keith QC is referencing reviews Letwin ordered to be carried out while he was a minister with his junior ministerial colleague Chloe Smith MP.

A slide is shown on screen of a memo sent in January 2012 to a number of people including Letwin's private secretary and senior officials about a review of the UK's resilience to pandemic influenza.

Keith asks if these were reviews into civil contingencies - provisions for emergency planning.

He says he was told this was the area of national life that is least well-prepared, so he drilled down into it.

Letwin says he asked Chloe Smith to hold meetings assuming the departments concerned with preparation in those sectors and her job was to interrogate them and ensure they were on the job.

Letwin says senior minister needs to be in charge of resiliencepublished at 10:47 British Summer Time 20 June 2023

10:47 BST 20 June 2023

Matt Cole
Political reporter, at the Covid Inquiry

The politician with responsibility for resilience in government from 2011 to 2016 has told the Covid Inquiry there needs to be a senior minister appointed with sole responsibility for the brief.

Oliver Letwin revealed the "endless" discussions to keep the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition "on the road" took up a lot of his time, so this element of his broad portfolio resilience was only a "small part."

This could be a crucial point as the Inquiry explores how well-prepared the UK was ahead of the pandemic.

Letwin called himself "a Mr Fix-it" for the government and told the hearing there "ought to be a minister solely dedicated to resilience at a senior level."

Crucially he added the appointment of a junior minister "would achieve nothing" and claimed resilience should be the responsibility of a senior minister close to the prime minister.

When emergencies do happen, Letwin says it is the impact they need to deal with.

"In particular the most vulnerable people, the people who are vulnerable to that impact. Unless you focus on impacts, you can't focus on the right vulnerabilities.

"Old people may be more vulnerable to some impacts, young people to others and so on.

"Although I do think it's important to separate between threats and hazards... I think the most important shift to achieve is the shift from focusing on causes to focusing on impacts."

On likelihood, Letwin says there is a "terrible danger" that planning focuses too much on low probability events as opposed to things that "are right in front of your nose."

"I think it's vital... that we focus on major impacts. It's the major one's that we're not properly prepared for."

On the flu pandemic he says his "great regret about not having focused on pandemic flu because I was advised it was being well looked after" is that if he had focused on it then he could have prepared better plans.

Letwin is asked whether the cabinet system that dealt with hazards was crowded out by the focus on national security threats?

Letwin says there's a danger threats are more considered in Whitehall than hazards.

"I hope there will be a head of resilience... maybe we could create an equivalent or counterbalancing power in Whitehall pushing for consideration of things that aren't threats."

He says there was overbalance towards threats.

After Letwin likened the cabinet to "a revolving door of ministers", Covid inquiry Chair Baroness Hallett has interrupted to question him on this point.

"Can I just ask, you describe the revolving door and I think we're all familiar with it across government, is that because you think there is a trend to have a revolving door... or because there is a revolving door in this particular area because it isn't considered to be a career stop?"

"I think probably both, My Lady," Letwin says.

He thinks career success means you have to go through multiple jobs, something he says is a "disaster."

Letwin says that to take it seriously, there should've been people in place for longer.

Letwin asks if he can add one "incredibly important" point.

He says: "If you're a minister responsible for anything for six months, you could have training for the first two months, but by the time you finish your training you've practically finished your job."

He says if you're an official related to a crucial interest of the UK for 18 months and you have training that takes six months to arrange and another six to conduct, "by the time you know, you're off."

He says in five years in working on these issues, he kept coming across officials who knew "less than I did as me as the amateur".

"It isn't just a question of training, it's a question of training and having a system of having ministers and officials in post long enough so they can use the training."

Keith asks him if the "revolving door aspect" of ministerial appointments undermines experiences. Letwin replies: "I strongly believe it does."

On risk assessments now, Keith says a number of them would have been produced during Letwin's time in office.

Letwin would be presented with it, and he would be asked to give assent to it. Letwin says, "I didn't know the details" but that he was aware experts had worked on them.

"I know nothing about the science.

"It was of course absurd to suppose that I could counteract or overrule all these experts."

Letwin thinks he should've told himself "have they asked the right questions?"

This is what led him to the conclusion another team was needed to ask the right questions.

Keith asks Letwin whether written material on how to respond to a crisis would find its way to ministers when he was in office.

Letwin says it did arrive for blessing at the end of a very long bureaucratic process.

He says he was not focused on pandemic flu because he was advised it was being very well dealt with, adding it was a "matter of regret on my part".

Keith questions Letwin on policies now.

He asks if one of the more difficult features regarding preparedness and response is that he has to deal with both policy and response, and taking practical operational decisions.

Letwin says he doesn't "think this is an area where policy matters terribly. Policy matters where there are disagreements about the direction in which some aspect of the country's affairs should go.

"There are not disagreements here, that I'm aware of right across the political spectrum, we all want to prevent emergencies arising.

"There's only one policy which is minimise emergencies. It's all about the operations.

"You can have a guidance manual about PPE but if there's no PPE there it won't be available."