Semua Kabar

The chair of the Covid inquiry has ruled that evidence related to PPE Medpro, the firm linked to Baroness Michelle Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman, will be heard in a closed, private session next month.

On 3 March, the inquiry will begin four weeks of hearings into decisions to buy Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during the pandemic.

Baroness Hallett said she was imposing the restriction as she was satisfied there was a risk of prejudice to criminal proceedings if “sensitive evidence” was heard in public.

Victims’ groups and media outlets, including the BBC, had argued the dangers were overstated, given the early stage of the police investigation and the material already in the public domain.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) opened an investigation into PPE Medpro in May 2021 into suspected criminal offences committed in the procurement of PPE.

The company was awarded government contracts worth more than £200m after Baroness Mone recommended the firm to ministers during the Covid pandemic.

Baroness Mone, 52, and Mr Barrowman, 59, have denied wrongdoing.

In June 2024, the NCA said an unnamed 46-year-old man from Barnet, north London, had been arrested as part of its investigation.

To date, no criminal charges have been brought and the Crown Prosecution Service has not been formally instructed by the NCA.

On 9 December 2024, the Covid inquiry said it had received an application from the NCA for a restriction order, claiming there was a risk of harm to its investigation if sensitive evidence about PPE Medpro was heard in public.

The NCA originally wanted to prevent the inquiry hearing any evidence about the company, saying “other contracts could be selected”.

It then asked for 26 witness statements written by its staff to be withheld, and an order to be made preventing certain questions about the firm to be asked in the inquiry room in a public session.

It argued those restrictions should include the identity of any person under investigation; evidence relating to the opinion of any government official concerning PPE Medpro’s contracts; and evidence about payments to the company and who ultimately benefited.

In its submission, it said there was a “realistic possibility that criminal charges against one or more individuals will flow from the investigation”.

The Department of Health later asked for the terms of any restriction order to be widened to include any “financial material and correspondence” relating to the purchase of PPE from the company, although that request has been rejected by the inquiry.

In her final ruling, Baroness Hallett said it was both “necessary and proportionate” for the Covid inquiry to examine contracts between the government and PPE Medpro.

But she did accept there was a risk of damage to any future criminal proceedings if she allowed all the evidence to be heard in public.

As a result, any sensitive evidence about the company will be heard in a private, closed hearing, expected to be held in late March.

She said the NCA’s original application, which also sought to have members of the press and other organisations excluded from those closed sessions, went “further than necessary” and was “too wide an approach”.

Representatives of five media organisations will be invited to attend but will not be able to report on the proceedings until the conclusion of any criminal case, including possible appeals.

Baroness Hallett said that decision was in line with previous public inquiries, including the investigation into the Novichok poisoning in Salisbury.

A spokesman for the NCA said its investigation into PPE Medpro “remains a priority”.

“In such cases it can take considerable time to ensure that a thorough, independent and objective investigation is conducted,” he added.

Separate bills to let terminally ill people end their life are being considered at Westminster and in Scotland.

But the NHS in England is still well below its target for seeing patients within 18 weeks.

The trial, involving patients in Yeovil and Taunton, is looking at reducing courses of antibiotics.

Marine pilot Ian Lawrence and his family spent a year volunteering on a hospital ship.

A medical tribunal has found a senior doctor’s failings amounted to gross negligence and misconduct.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

The Covid inquiry is taking evidence from politicians, civil servants and health experts about the roll-out of vaccines and anti-viral treatment across the UK.

In July 2024, the inquiry’s first report said the UK’s flawed pandemic preparations had led to more deaths and greater economic damage than there should have been.

Just under 227,000 people died in the UK from Covid between March 2020 and May 2023, when the World Health Organization said the “global health emergency” was over.

The Covid inquiry was launched by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson in June 2022, more than a year after he said the government’s actions would be put “under the microscope”.

The announcement came after the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaign said it was considering launching a judicial review over government “time-wasting”.

Johnson said the inquiry would cover decision-making during the pandemic by the UK government, as well as the administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The first public hearings took place in London in June 2023. Subsequent hearings have been held in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast.

Public inquiries are established and funded by the government and are led by an independent chair. They can compel witnesses to give evidence.

No-one is found guilty or innocent, but the inquiry publishes conclusions and recommendations, which the government is not obliged to accept.

Covid inquiry: The UK pandemic in numbers

The inquiry is chaired by former judge and crossbench peer Baroness Hallett, who previously led the inquests into the 7 July London bombings.

She said that loss and suffering would be at the heart of the inquiry, adding it would be “firmly independent”.

Baroness Hallett promised the inquiry would be “thorough and fair”

Baroness Hallett said the inquiry would examine how decisions on limiting the spread of Covid were made and communicated; the use of lockdowns and face coverings; and the impact on children, health and care sector workers, and the clinically vulnerable.

She will also consider the effect on bereaved families, and how the findings could be applied to other national emergencies.

Loss and suffering at heart of Covid inquiry

Several reports are expected, covering everything from political decision-making to vaccines.

Publishing the first of these in July 2024, Baroness Hallett said the UK was “ill-prepared for dealing with a catastrophic emergency, let alone the coronavirus pandemic”.

“Never again can a disease be allowed to lead to so many deaths and so much suffering,” she added.

The 217-page report, external argued the UK planned for the wrong pandemic – a mild one where spread of a new virus was inevitable – and this led to the “untested” policy of lockdown.

It said the UK government and devolved nations “failed their citizens”, and that ministers did not sufficiently challenge scientific experts.

It made a series of recommendations for reforming the way the government approaches emergency planning across the four nations of the UK.

Baroness Hallett said she wanted these to be acted on quickly, with changes in place within six months or a year.

The inquiry is split into different parts., external

Work on the first module, resilience and preparedness, external, has finished, but the inquiry is actively investigating several other aspects of Covid:

decision-making and political governance in Westminster, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

the impact on healthcare systems across the UK

vaccines, therapeutics and anti-viral treatment

government procurement and PPE

the impact on children and young people

the government’s business and financial responses

the impact on society

There is no specific timescale for how long the inquiry will last, but Baroness Hallett aims to hold the final public hearings in 2026.

Scotland is holding a separate inquiry into the pandemic.

The inquiry has heard from hundreds of witnesses, including current and former politicians, civil servants, government advisers, public health experts and representatives of bereaved families.

Many were extremely critical of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was in No 10 throughout the pandemic.

He began his two-day evidence session in December 2023 by apologising for the “pain and the loss and the suffering” experienced during the pandemic.

This video can not be played

Barnard Castle, ICU and heckling: Johnson grilled at Covid inquiry

Johnson admitted mistakes were made and that “there were unquestionably things we should have done differently”, but insisted that ministers had done their “level best” in difficult circumstances.

Five takeaways from Johnson at the Covid inquiry

Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak gave evidence about his role as Chancellor during Covid.

He also apologised to “all those who suffered… as a result of the actions that were taken”, but denied his Eat Out to Help Out Scheme had increased infections and deaths.

Rishi Sunak served food at Wagamama as part of a promotional event for Eat Out to Help Out

The government’s chief medical officer, Prof Sir Chris Whitty, and former chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, previously told the inquiry they had not been consulted about the policy.

Did Sunak’s Eat Out scheme help to spread Covid?

Sir Patrick, Sir Chris and his former deputy Prof Sir Jonathan Van-Tam also said they had received substantial abuse from the public while carrying out their roles.

Several witnesses accused Matt Hancock of lying during his tenure as Health Secretary, which he denied

Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock has given evidence several times.

He told the inquiry that the UK’s pandemic strategy had been completely wrong, and later denied that he lied to colleagues, while admitting the UK should have locked down much sooner.

Hancock also criticised the “toxic culture” in government, for which he blamed Johnson’s former adviser Dominic Cummings.

In his evidence, Mr Cummings described a “dysfunctional” government and was very critical of Johnson’s approach. The hearing also discussed scathing text messages he sent, many of which contained offensive descriptions of ministers and officials.

Mr Cummings said he regretted the handling of his infamous trip to Barnard Castle during the first lockdown, but denied that he had damaged public trust in the government.

Covid inquiry WhatsApps paint picture of chaos

How inquiry is exposing deep flaws in Covid decision-making

The inquiry also heard from Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish political leaders, including:

former Scottish First Ministers Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf

former Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford

current Northern Irish First Minister Michelle O’Neill and former First Minister Baroness Foster

Groups representing bereaved families have urged the inquiry to ensure these voices are heard.

Anyone can share their experience through the inquiry’s Every Story Matters, external project, and apply to attend public hearings in person., external

Public hearings are also streamed on the BBC News website and the inquiry’s YouTube channel, external.

In addition, witness transcripts are published on the inquiry website., external

Covid-19 Public Inquiry

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Michael Gove has told the Covid inquiry it was “ludicrous” to suggest he tried to force through a deal for a new ventilator made by the electronics giant Dyson without proper safety checks.

Emails show a senior official at the health watchdog warned that the former cabinet office minister was trying to “circumvent the regulatory process” in March 2020.

Messages between staff at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said Mr Gove did not “appreciate the level of risk involved” and was working to a “totally unrealistic” timescale.

A provisional order for 10,000 machines was placed at the time, but the deal was scrapped after Dyson failed to win regulatory approval.

No public money was spent on the prototype.

Dyson said it never intended to make a profit from the venture and wrote off around £20m in research and development costs.

In March 2020, as Covid was spreading across northern Italy, there was a frantic attempt by health authorities to get hold of ventilators to help patients breathe.

The NHS had between 6,000 and 8,000 in stock but modelling suggested it needed 30,000 by the end of June and 90,000 by November to cope with a predicted influx of patients.

On 16 March 2020, the government launched the ‘Ventilator Challenge’ – a drive to encourage domestic UK suppliers to develop new machines or modify existing designs.

The project was overseen by cabinet office officials and involved the MHRA, which helped draw up initial specifications and squeezed an approval process that would usually take 18-24 months into just weeks.

A number of major companies were involved, including the carmakers Ford and McLaren, and the electronics giant Dyson.

At the time, the company’s founder Sir James Dyson held a number of telephone conversations with government officials, including the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The Covid inquiry was shown WhatsApp messages then sent between ministers and government advisers suggesting Sir James was concerned about the pace of project.

On 20 March 2020, Mr Johnson wrote that “Dyson [was] freaking” and called for “Action this day”.

Minutes later ex health secretary Matt Hancock replied, “I have also received the same. I will talk to Dyson and Michael [Gove] and sort it.”

Asked about the deal at the inquiry, the government’s then chief commercial officer, Sir Gareth Rhys Williams, said it was the only example he could recall in the pandemic where he was asked to put a contract in place “against commercial guidance”.

Five days later, on 25 March, Boris Johnson wrote another WhatsApp message to the same group saying that: “Dyson has a ventilator ready to go… It’s safe, effective and loses less oxygen. Rhys Williams has blocked it under the misapprehension that oxygen passes through the motor. That is total b****cks.”

He accused officials of “fiddling while Rome burns” and added: “Sorry but I’m on a mission. Dyson knows what he’s doing and won’t risk his global brand reputation delivering dodgy ventilators.”

Sir Gareth said, at that point, the Dyson prototype pushed air from a fan directly into the lungs of patients, something that could cause safety concerns.

The Dyson team did subsequently “fix” that part of the design, he added.

Later on 25 March, Sir Gareth wrote to Sir John Manzoni, a top civil servant in the cabinet office, saying that Michael Gove was “INSISTENT we place an order with Dyson… contingent on passing clinical and passing MHRA approvals.”

A provisional £100,000 order was then placed for the Dyson prototypes, and an email from Michael Gove’s private office set out a number of actions that needed be taken quickly including: “The MHRA and Sir Gareth Rhys Williams to ensure by the end of Friday, [that] the Dyson product has been tested and approved by MHRA… [and] the final product has started to be manufactured.”

The following day Graeme Tunbridge, the director of devices for the MHRA, wrote to colleagues warning that Michael Gove was “keen to press forward with Dyson’s proposal to a timescale that is totally unrealistic.”

He added that Mr Gove “did not appreciate the level of risk involved in the manufacture and use of ventilators” and “wanted to circumvent the expedited regulatory process that has been put in place”.

“MHRA are doing everything we can to support this but absolutely will not cut any corners when it comes to the issues of critical patient safety,” he wrote.

Giving evidence to the inquiry, Mr Gove denied he had tried to pressure the MHRA in any way, or that the focus on Dyson meant resources could not be devoted to bids from other companies.

“Just imagine the situation, if you will, a minister – Matt Hancock, I, Boris Johnson – says we want to have a potentially lethal machine in hospitals deliberately so that we can meet an arbitrary deadline. It’s inconceivable,” he said.

The former minister said that the Dyson prototype ultimately “did not get through testing” and “whenever confronted with brute facts about safety or otherwise, I would always accept them.”

He denied that his private office was instructing the regulator to approve the device saying the language used was simply “shorthand for ‘we would hope that it had been tested and if tested satisfactorily [then] approved by the MHRA to that timescale'”.

In the end the government said the Ventilator Challenge helped scale up the production of three existing models, and approved one new design by the medical devices firm Penlon.

In total, an extra 14,000 devices were delivered over three months, fewer than the government originally planned for as doctors identified other ways of treating the most severe Covid cases.

In a statement, Dyson said Sir James Dyson responded to a personal call from Boris Johnson to “develop and make a medical-grade ventilator in 30 days during the national emergency”.

“Far from receiving any commercial benefit, there was significant commercial cost to Dyson which diverted 450 engineers away from commercial projects,” added a company spokesperson.

“Uniquely amongst the many businesses involved, [Sir] James Dyson did not seek payment for any of the £20m the company spent on the project – rather this was its contribution to the national effort to save lives.”

Separate bills to let terminally ill people end their life are being considered at Westminster and in Scotland.

But the NHS in England is still well below its target for seeing patients within 18 weeks.

The trial, involving patients in Yeovil and Taunton, is looking at reducing courses of antibiotics.

Marine pilot Ian Lawrence and his family spent a year volunteering on a hospital ship.

A medical tribunal has found a senior doctor’s failings amounted to gross negligence and misconduct.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

Baroness Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman have accused the Covid inquiry of an “establishment cover-up” after their second attempt to be given an official role in the inquiry was rejected.

The couple claimed they were the targets of a “politically motivated witch hunt” after the inquiry’s chairwoman, Baroness Hallett, refused their application to be made “core participants”.

PPE Medpro, a firm led by Mr Barrowman, was awarded government contracts worth more than £200m after Baroness Mone recommended it to ministers.

If approved, the official status would have allowed the couple to access inquiry documents, make statements and apply to ask questions of witnesses.

Baroness Hallett first rejected their approach in February, saying it came 468 days after the deadline for applications, and she did not accept they had a large enough role “in the matters to be investigated by the inquiry”.

She had previously said her main focus is on the approach of ministers and the government, rather than Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) suppliers.

The Covid inquiry is conducting four weeks of hearings looking at deals to buy £15bn of PPE during Covid.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) has been investigating PPE Medpro since May 2021 over suspected criminal offences committed in the procurement process.

To date no charges have been brought and the Crown Prosecution Service has not been instructed in the case. Baroness Mone, 53, and Mr Barrowman, 59, have both denied wrongdoing.

A special inquiry hearing about the company will take place behind closed doors next week after Baroness Hallett said she was satisfied there was a risk of prejudice to the ongoing NCA investigation if “sensitive evidence” was made public.

In a joint statement, Baroness Mone and her husband said the decision to hear evidence in private was “a blatant betrayal of transparency and justice” and accused the NCA of waging “a ruthless campaign” against them.

The couple said: “While the inquiry refused to exclude PPE Medpro, it handed the NCA the power to dictate the proceedings behind a wall of secrecy, ensuring that only their version of events is heard – while we are denied the right to defend ourselves.”

In a social media post, Baroness Mone said she did not realise that the company would be “specifically profiled” by the inquiry until the end of February.

“Until then, it was understood that discussions were general, covering overall PPE procurement, not targeting any individual entity,” she added.

The couple’s statement was released after their second approach to be made core participants was rejected.

Baroness Hallett said allowing the application to proceed would have led to a “further diversion of resources” and have caused “significant disruption” to the inquiry’s timetable.

Separate bills to let terminally ill people end their life are being considered at Westminster and in Scotland.

But the NHS in England is still well below its target for seeing patients within 18 weeks.

The trial, involving patients in Yeovil and Taunton, is looking at reducing courses of antibiotics.

Marine pilot Ian Lawrence and his family spent a year volunteering on a hospital ship.

A medical tribunal has found a senior doctor’s failings amounted to gross negligence and misconduct.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

Matt Hancock has defended government deals to buy personal protective equipment (PPE) during the pandemic, saying the country was in a “desperate situation” at the time.

In a bad-tempered session at the Covid inquiry, the former health secretary repeatedly criticised the line of questioning describing it as “naive”, “hostile” and “inappropriate”.

He said he was “not at all surprised” when a so-called VIP lane for PPE suppliers with a political connection was set up, describing it as “standard practice”.

At one point, the chairwoman of the inquiry, Baroness Hallett, intervened, telling Hancock it was her job to learn lessons for any future pandemic.

Hancock was appearing for the fifth time at the Covid inquiry, which is now investigating the purchase and distribution of £15bn of PPE in the pandemic, along with testing kits, ventilators and other pieces of medical equipment.

He defended a public “call to arms” made at a Downing Street news conference on 10 April 2020 for more UK suppliers of PPE to come forward.

The inquiry has heard from previous witnesses, including the government’s former chief commercial officer Sir Gareth Rhys Williams, that the appeal was counterproductive, leading to a large number of approaches which threatened to overwhelm the system.

“We were radically short of PPE [at the time] and the country was about to run out at a national level,” Hancock told the inquiry.

“No-one has testified that the call to arms led to anything other than more PPE… So I stand by that.”

The former health secretary was then asked about the High Priority Lane, or VIP lane, which was set up by officials in the Department of Health in England to help manage offers by prioritising those referred by an MP, member of the House of Lords or senior civil servant.

Hancock said he was not involved in designing the system, which he said had made him the target of an “enormous amount of conspiracy theories”.

The inquiry commissioned an expert report from Prof Albert Sanchez-Graells, a professor of law at the University of Bristol, which was critical of the approach and found no evidence of similar prioritisation in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, or other countries around the world.

“It’s fine having academics write papers about this stuff… but you’ve got to understand what it was like [at the time],” said Hancock.

“The pressure to save lives was intense, but so was the reality that high-quality offers would be sent through to senior decision-makers, and you had to have a process for dealing with that.”

He said that other countries would have had their own systems for prioritising offers for PPE and medical equipment in different ways.

Hancock was later asked about a contract awarded to a firm run by Alex Bourne, who owned a pub in his West Suffolk constituency, to make vials for Covid testing.

Emails show Hancock passed on communications from Mr Bourne to the then health minister Lord Bethell, describing his analysis of the wider testing system as a “very interesting critique” from a “very impressive guy”.

In questioning, Hancock said he acted with “impeccable behaviour” at the time, and accused the inquiry’s chief counsel Richard Wald KC of cherry-picking a “couple of messages” that have the “most tabloid interest”.

He said the inquiry had followed a “wholly naive” line of questioning by ignoring the reality of the situation at the time, while making “terribly pejorative” statements that were “totally inappropriate”.

At the conclusion of his evidence, Baroness Hallett told Hancock that he “was not the first and I’m sure won’t be the last witness to think the inquiry is all about criticising people”.

“My aim is to investigate what happened, to explore matters of public concern, to get people to answer on those areas, and to try to come up with recommendations that will save lives,” she added.

Separate bills to let terminally ill people end their life are being considered at Westminster and in Scotland.

But the NHS in England is still well below its target for seeing patients within 18 weeks.

The trial, involving patients in Yeovil and Taunton, is looking at reducing courses of antibiotics.

Marine pilot Ian Lawrence and his family spent a year volunteering on a hospital ship.

A medical tribunal has found a senior doctor’s failings amounted to gross negligence and misconduct.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

Boris Johnson pushed for a more “ruthless, authoritarian approach” towards people who refused to self-isolate during the pandemic, according to documents seen by the Covid inquiry.

The instinct of policy makers was to favour “punitive measures” over financial support, wrote Lord Patrick Vallance who spoke to the PM throughout the crisis and appeared alongside him on TV briefings.

Diary entries written during that time by Lord Vallance, then the UK’s chief scientific adviser, revealed officials “always want[ed] to go for stick, not carrot”.

Lord Vallance has said his diary entries were informal personal reflections and “late night musings”, never intended for publication.

He was giving evidence to the sixth part of the Covid inquiry, which is investigating test, trace and quarantine policies.

During 90 minutes of questioning, he was shown a series of entries from his evening diaries from the first year of the pandemic.

On 12 August 2020, he wrote about a meeting with the prime minister and his senior aides, including then chief adviser Dominic Cummings and cabinet secretary Simon Case.

“Instinct of this crew is to go for more enforcement and punitive measures,” he wrote.

“We suggested more carrot and incentives [were] required to make people take a test, self-isolate etc, but they always want to go for stick not carrot.”

Asked who he was referring to in that entry, Lord Vallance said it would have been the “decision-makers for policy”.

In another entry, on 25 September 2020, as Covid cases were rising once again, he quoted Boris Johnson as saying: “We need a lot more punishments and a lot more closing down”.

And in a further entry on 7 January 2021, just after the start of the third nationwide lockdown, he wrote: “PM says: ‘We haven’t been ruthless enough. We need to force more isolation. I favour a more authoritarian approach.'”

He added: “Rather late in the day, the PM isn’t understanding that incentives (or removal of disincentives) need to be in place to help people.”

On 28 September 2020, ministers introduced a legal duty for those who had tested positive for Covid or were contacted by the test-and-trace service to self-isolate in England. It was announced that fines of between £1,000 and £10,000 would be imposed on repeat offenders.

Test-and-trace support payments of £500 were also offered for those on lower incomes.

Sir Patrick said it was “important to remember” the purpose of mass testing was to identify potentially infectious individuals who could self-isolate and “if isolation isn’t happening, then testing isn’t really doing what it’s supposed to be doing”.

When the new rules were introduced, Boris Johnson said the public needed to do “all it could to control the spread of the virus” and prevent the most vulnerable from becoming infected.

Earlier, Matt Hancock told the inquiry it was “crucial” the UK should retain its ability to rapidly scale-up mass testing for a new disease in any future pandemic.

The former health secretary said he was concerned the testing system set up in 2020 was now being dismantled, making it much harder to respond.

“The critical thing is that we absolutely must, as a nation, be ready to radically expand capacity once a test is developed,” he said. “We were not last time.”

Mr Hancock was asked about a letter he was sent, on 14 April 2020, by two Nobel prize winning scientists, Sir Paul Nurse and Sir Peter Ratcliffe, urging that all healthcare workers be offered regular tests for the virus.

In evidence last week, Prof Nurse said his letter had been “ignored” by the secretary of state for three months, before he received an “anodyne response” from another civil servant.

Regular testing of care home workers didn’t start until the summer of 2020 in England, while NHS staff and other social care workers were not offered weekly tests until November of that year.

Mr Hancock said he had not seen the letter personally and by that point, the government was already putting in place policies to tackle the transmission of the virus by people without clear Covid symptoms.

“The argument that is implied is that, somehow, somebody eminent who won a Nobel Prize knew something and we ignored it. It’s just not true. It’s not what happened,” he said.

Separate bills to let terminally ill people end their life are being considered at Westminster and in Scotland.

But the NHS in England is still well below its target for seeing patients within 18 weeks.

The trial, involving patients in Yeovil and Taunton, is looking at reducing courses of antibiotics.

Marine pilot Ian Lawrence and his family spent a year volunteering on a hospital ship.

A medical tribunal has found a senior doctor’s failings amounted to gross negligence and misconduct.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

If the UK had spent more money helping people to self-isolate during the pandemic then fewer people would have been infected or died, the former head of NHS Test and Trace has said.

Baroness Dido Harding, who was in charge of the programme in England, told the Covid inquiry she repeatedly argued to increase financial support, but was “frustrated” by the response of then chancellor, Rishi Sunak.

“There was an intransigence that I think was very sad,” she said in her evidence.

On 28 September 2020, the government did bring in a £500 self-isolation payment for low income workers on state benefits who were told to stay at home after being in contact with an infected person.

A parallel scheme of discretionary payments was set up by some local authorities to support those outside the welfare system.

In her evidence, Baroness Harding said the UK spent proportionally “much less than other developed countries enabling disadvantaged people to self-isolate”.

“If we had allocated more of the NHS Test and Trace budget to isolation support, I strongly suspect that fewer would have died and infection rates would have been lower with all the benefits that would have brought,” she said in her witness statement.

“It’s certainly the thing that I wished I had succeeded in persuading ministers to do,” she added in the hearing.

“But I wasn’t the decision maker. The decision maker in this was the chancellor and at every opportunity, from June [2020] onwards, the chancellor rejected the proposals.”

Last week, the inquiry was shown private diary entries written by the government’s then chief scientific adviser, Lord Patrick Vallance.

He wrote at the time that it was the “instinct” of policy makers to use the “stick” of enforcement and fines to convince people to self-isolate, rather than the “carrot” of financial support favoured by the government’s science advisers.

After one meeting, on 27 July 2020, he wrote: “Dido [Harding] pushed to get financial support for people to get tested in low socio-economic groups.

“Rishi [Sunak] reacted strongly to that and said basically: ‘Just stop the social interactions.'”

Baroness Harding, a former retail and telecoms executive who was appointed to lead the test and trace system in May 2020, said data in the first year of the pandemic suggested individuals were not being tested because they were “scared of the consequences of isolation”.

“To be honest, it was intensely frustrating,” she told the inquiry, adding that she found reading messages from the time “quite distressing”.

“We did try really hard to persuade ministers that [increased financial support] would be a good thing, not just for the individual wellbeing of those disadvantaged people, but also economically, as this was one of the ways you could have less economic harm for the country as a whole,” she added.

She said she felt chancellor Rishi Sunak had rejected her arguments as a “point of principle” because he did not want to create what could be seen as a new welfare benefit.

“I don’t think there was any amount of data and analysis that I could have put that would have changed his mind,” she said.

“I think you can hear my frustration as I say it.”

Rishi Sunak has not been called to give evidence to this three-week section of the Covid inquiry, which is looking at testing, contact tracing and isolation policies.

But, last week, Dan York-Smith, a senior civil servant in the Treasury, said a number of economic measures were brought in to support workers, including extensions to statutory sick pay and the furlough scheme.

He said the chancellor was particularly worried about creating “perverse intensives” which might have increased the risks of fraud, or meant some workers could be paid more to self-isolate than in wages.

Separate bills to let terminally ill people end their life are being considered at Westminster and in Scotland.

But the NHS in England is still well below its target for seeing patients within 18 weeks.

The trial, involving patients in Yeovil and Taunton, is looking at reducing courses of antibiotics.

Marine pilot Ian Lawrence and his family spent a year volunteering on a hospital ship.

A medical tribunal has found a senior doctor’s failings amounted to gross negligence and misconduct.

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A disproportionate number of children referred to NHS excess weight clinics in England are from the most deprived areas, and a significant number are neurodivergent or have other health conditions, a study has found.

Some have a body mass index (BMI) over 50, with 40 deemed to be severely obese.

Nearly 4,800 under-18s have been referred to the clinics since they were set up in 2021, according to research carried out by Leeds Beckett, Sheffield Hallam, Leeds and Bristol universities and presented at the European Congress on Obesity.

The clinics provide mental health support and care for other underlying conditions, as well as dietary advice.

Specialist excess weight clinics treat severely obese children in England aged 2-17, who are flagged as needing help by their GP or another doctor.

The clinics are run by multi-disciplinary teams including paediatricians, psychologists and dieticians.

The new research, which looked at 32 of the clinics, found that over 40% of the children attending them lived in the most deprived neighbourhoods.

Based on data from more than 3,000 child patients, many had other health conditions:

Professor Simon Kenny, national clinical director at NHS England, said he was “shocked” by the challenges that the young people faced when he met them and their families.

“I became aware of the fact that this an invisible problem because they so rarely get out of the house.

“That means they are not attending school, they are not interacting with their peer group,” Prof Kenny said.

He explained that living with excess weight can cause problems affecting every organ system. Poor school attendance can also affect future employment and life opportunities.

“The NHS won’t just sit by and let children and young people become ill adults,” he said.

Some of the specialist clinics are using digital technology for weight loss support. For example, children can use ‘smart scales’ at home which do not show their weight. The data is connected to a mobile app to show the trend without the numbers. Only clinicians are able to see the data and provide feedback to the family.

Tam Fry, chair of the National Obesity Forum, while welcoming the use of technology, said: “They should have been doing this years ago.”

He said there hadn’t been enough emphasis on routine weighing and measuring.

“This should be done at regular intervals and due note taken of the trend. There are graphs from child health records which are not used. Children arrive at school in an unfit condition and that’s often too late,” Mr Fry added.

In another paper presented to the European Congress on Obesity, presented by Dr Annika Janson from Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden, researchers said giving weight loss jabs to children could be effective.

She said that trials of the drugs in children aged 12 and over had shown a loss of 5-16% of body weight after a year, but added it was “difficult to isolate the effect of adding GLP-1 drugs to the plethora of treatments that are already available”.

The medicines regulator NICE has not approved weight loss drugs for routine use by children in England, although they can be provided by specialists if there is urgent clinical need.

Body mass index (BMI) is widely used as a simple way of finding out whether a person is a healthy weight for their height.

a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 is considered to be a healthy weight

a BMI of 25 to 29.9 is considered to be overweight

a BMI over 30 is considered to be obese

But it’s not accurate for everyone because it can’t tell the difference between fat and muscle, and doesn’t take into account ethnic background.

Your waist circumference may be a better guide.

Separate bills to let terminally ill people end their life are being considered at Westminster and in Scotland.

A coroner pays tribute to Katie Watson, who appeared on Channel 4’s Geordie Hospital.

But the NHS in England is still well below its target for seeing patients within 18 weeks.

The trial, involving patients in Yeovil and Taunton, is looking at reducing courses of antibiotics.

Marine pilot Ian Lawrence and his family spent a year volunteering on a hospital ship.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

The government is abolishing NHS England without a clear plan for how it will be achieved and how it will benefit frontline care, a cross-party group of MPs has warned.

Ministers announced in March that the body responsible for overseeing the health service in England would go, with its functions brought into the Department of Health and Social Care.

But the Public Accounts Committee said it was concerned about the uncertainty being caused and urged the government to set out a clear plan within the next three months.

The government said the move would eliminate “wasteful duplication” and that detailed planning had started.

Alongside the changes at a national level, the 42 local health boards responsible for planning services are also having to shed around half of their 25,000 staff.

The MPs also raised concerns about the “jaw-dropping” amount of money lawyers are making from clinical negligence claims. Of the £2.8bn paid out in 2023-24, nearly a fifth went on legal costs.

It said this was unacceptable and more must be done to improve safety.

Committee chair and Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said the changes to NHS England and local health boards amounted to a major structural reform.

He said strong decision-making and experienced staff would be vital to manage a period of “huge pressure” for the NHS.

“It has been two months since the government’s decision to remove what, up until now, has been seen as a key piece of machinery, without articulating a clear plan for what comes next – and the future for patients and staff remains hazy,” he added.

NHS England, which employs nearly 15,000 staff, is in charge of £193bn of public sector money this year.

The reduction in staffing of abolishing NHS England is expected to save £400m, while the cut in local health board staff is expected to add another £700-750m.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Social Care said the changes would eliminate “wasteful duplication” and a joint board was already working on detailed plans.

“Serious reform is needed to tackle the challenges facing the NHS,” she added.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents NHS trusts, said the changes “marked the biggest reshaping of the NHS in a decade”.

He said that while many managers in the NHS understood the need for change, the lack of detail and how the plans fitted in with the forthcoming 10-year plan were “a cause for concern” for those running the health service.

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A coroner pays tribute to Katie Watson, who appeared on Channel 4’s Geordie Hospital.

Union members have called for the NHS to stop using private companies.

A medical tribunal has found a senior doctor’s failings amounted to gross negligence and misconduct.

Babatunde Aranmolate removed drugs without permission from a locked cupboard at a west London hospital.

A failed stem cell transplant was one of the factors that led to the death of Tina Doig.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.