Ex-civil service head apologises for proposing chickenpox party … – The Guardian

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Nicholas Soames, the Tory peer and grandson of Winston Churchill, has said that Rishi Sunak’s government should be “very careful” about “playing politics” with fundamental British freedoms.

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Referring to government moves to stop the pro-Palestinian march going ahead in London on Saturday, Soames told the Guardian:

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n

The government needs to proceed extremely carefully in this matter. Tens of millions of people died in two world wars so that British people have the right and freedom to express their beliefs. You cannot just decide that this is not the case and put the head of the Met under this kind of pressure.

n

If the Met chief, who I have a great deal of time for, says there is no good reason to ban the march, there is no good reason for banning the march. Most of the people who plan to attend the march have a point to make and plan to do so peacefully. If a small number of people cause trouble, the police can deal with it,

n

The government needs to be very careful to make sure they do not look as if they are playing politics. They need to be very careful that this is not some sort of gimmick. Operational matters are for the commissioner. It is his judgment that should count and I would caution the government to be very cautious about eroding freedoms.

n

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peer Nicholas Soames backs Met’s decision to allow pro-Palestinian march and urges PM not to play politics with issue”,”contributors”:[{“name”:”Rajeev Syal”,”imageUrl”:”https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2023/09/18/Rajeev_Syal.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=8cdca3e3f0cd8ceccfa6ddb30a12bb76″,”largeImageUrl”:”https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2023/09/18/Rajeev_Syal.png?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=5d99437b4f0619ea54913f442065a26c”}],”primaryDateLine”:”Wed 8 Nov 2023 08.35 EST”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Wed 8 Nov 2023 04.25 EST”},{“id”:”654b827a8f08ea78620d2091″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Downing Street has rejected claims that Rishi Sunak’s comment this morning about holding the Metropolitan police “accountable” for its decision to allow the pro-Palestinian march to go ahead on Saturday amounted to putting pressure on the commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley.

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When this claim was put to him, the PM’s spokesperson replied:

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n

No, that’s part and parcel of how government and the Met operate. The Met are operationally independent, it’s the job of the prime minister and the government to hold them to account for their approach. So, that is what the prime minister will be doing.

n

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Sedwill accepts that the “stay at home” order given on 16 March could have been given earlier.

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Q: And if it had, the lockdown could have been avoided?

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Sedwill says that is possible. But he says he is “highly sceptical” about whether the lockdown could have been avoided entirely.

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He says proper academic research is needed to show what might have happened if the soft lockdown had happened earlier.

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But he says he accepts that acting early would probably have had a “positive effect” on casualties.

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It might not have avoided the need for lockdown. It is more likely to have had an impact on the duration of the lockdown, he says.

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Keith asks about the comment from Sedwill implying a chickenpox party approach might work for Covid.

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Sedwill says this remark was made before the meetings had taken place where No 10 realised a new approach was needed. He says when Ben Warner, another official, challenged what he said, he realised the chickenpox analogy was inappropriate. He says this was a remark made in private.

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He says:

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n

These were private exchanges and I certainly had not expected for this to become public.

n

I understand how, in particular, the interpretation that has been put on it, it must have come across as someone in my role was both heartless and thoughtless about this, and I genuinely am neither. But I do understand the distress that must have caused and I apologise for that.

n

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Keith is now showing the inquiry an exchange of emails between Dominic Cummings and Sedwill on 11 March 2020. Cummings wanted to set up a new meeting to deal with Covid decisions.

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In his reply, Sedwill said he objected to the idea that key decisions would be taken by “a bunch of No 10 Spads (special advisers)“ and the PM, with no ministers, no experts and no scientists there. “We are not running a dictatorship here,” he said.

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n

We are not running a dictatorship here and the PM is not taking nationally significant decisions with a bunch of No10 SpAds and no ministers, no operational experts and no scientists. If necessary, I will take over the 8:15 slot and chair a daily meeting myself.

n

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Sedwill says the email expressed “pretty pungently my views about collective government”.

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Rishi Sunak has vowed to hold the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, “accountable” for his defiance of demands for a ban on a pro-Palestinian march planned for Armistice Day, Daniel Boffey reports.

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Back at the Covid inquiry Keith is now asking about the period when Boris Johnson was on holiday in mid-February. For 10 days he did not get emails about Covid, Keith says.

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Sedwill says he would have expected the work on Covid to continue during this period.

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Q: But the rate of work did seem to slow down. At the higher level of government, not a lot of work seems to have been done. That is “regrettable”, isn’t it?

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Sedwill says he would have expected the work to continue.

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Rishi Sunak has said people should not be criminalised for having nowhere to live – but declined to rule out a restriction on tents for homeless people, PA Media reports.

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On a visit to a school this morning, asked if Suella Braverman’s plan to stop charities giving tents to people sleeping rough would be in the criminal justice bill, Sunak replied:

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n

I don’t want anyone to have to sleep rough and I’m proud of the government’s track record over the past few years in tackling that.

n

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Sunak said the police should have the power to deal with “intimidating or violent conduct”. He went on:

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n

We said earlier in the year that we didn’t want anyone to be criminalised for not having somewhere to live and that’s why we were going to repeal something called the Vagrancy Act, which is an outdated piece of law from the 1800s, and at the same time as part of that plan we want to make sure that intimidating or violent conduct, that the police do have the powers to tackle that.

n

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Sunak refused to repeat Braverman’s claim that sleeping rough is a “lifestyle choice”.

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Asked if he felt Braverman was supporting or undermining him, the PM said: “What the home secretary and the government is doing is focus on people’s priorities.”

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As PA reports, Downing Street sources said the Braverman plan to stop charities handing out tents to the homeless is still “undergoing scrutiny”.

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Keith quotes from the minutes of a cabinet meeting on 6 February 2020 saying Boris Johnson warned against over-reacting to the threat from Covid.

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Sedwill says at this point the scientific advice was that the worst-case scenario was still unlikely.

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n

If you look earlier in that cabinet minute, it is still the case that the scientific advice is essentially suggesting that the worst-case scenario is unlikely, is indeed very unlikely. So that, undoubtedly, would have informed the way ministers were thinking about this.

n

The prime minister in that summary is trying to balance the tensions.

n

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Heather Hallett, the chair, intervenes. She says if the worst-case scenario was 800,000 deaths, that implies anything less than the worst case would still be very, very serious.

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Sedwill accepts that. He says focusing just on the reasonable worst-case scenario could be problematic.

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Hallett asks if anyone told ministers not to focus on the reasonable worst-case scenario, but to ask instead what the chances were of a large number of deaths.

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Sedwill agrees with her point. He says ministers should have focused on likely and possible scenarios, not just the worst-case scenarios.

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They are now holding a 10-minute break.

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inquiry chair suggests ministers should have focused more on possible death scenarios, not just worst-case scenario”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Wed 8 Nov 2023 08.35 EST”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Wed 8 Nov 2023 04.25 EST”},{“id”:”654b68388f086c9905b7144d”,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Sedwill says at this point he thought that, if Covid did arrive in the UK, it would be possible to manage the extent of its spread, but that it would not be possible to stop it spreading at all.

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n

My understanding from the briefings we had was that it might be possible to manage the spread of the virus, but that it was inevitable because no-one had immunity, that it would spread through the population.

n

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During the first half of February scientists had a good understanding of the nature of the virus, and the number of deaths that might occur if it were allowed to spread. But there was also an assumption that plans were in place to stop this happening, he says.

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He says he and others should have “interrogated” those plans “more carefully”.

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Keith is only now asking about Covid. All the questions so far have been about process.

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Sedwill says, when concerns about Covid arose, he did not agree to a meeting of the Cobra emergency committee taking place immediately. He wanted to ensure that the meeting was prepared for. And he was concerned that having a Cobra meeting might alarm people.

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He says there had been a history of Cobra meetings being called “for communications purposes” – and not for decision making.

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But, after two days, he was persuaded a Cobra meeting was necessary.

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UPDATE: Sedwill said:

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n

I felt that a Cobra which might have been convened primarily for communications purposes wasn’t wise. Two days later I was advised there was a genuine cross-government basis for it and I agreed.

n

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Keith asked:

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n

May we be plain please as to what you mean by communications purposes. Were you concerned that the Cobra was being called by the DHSC [the Department of Health and Social Care] for presentation purposes, that is to say to make a splash about the role of DHSC, perhaps its secretary of state [Matt Hancock], and that’s why you initially hesitated.

n

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Sedwill replied: “That is a fair summary of my thinking.”

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Keith says he wants to ask about the efficacy of Boris Johnson’s administration.

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Q: As a government coming into office, was it an experienced administration?

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Sedwill says there were some very experienced ministers in it, like Michael Gove. Matt Hancock has been in cabinet for several years. There were others as well, he says.

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But he says, overall, it was “more like an opposition party coming into power after a general election” because of the Brexit process.

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Q: How focused was that administration on is own agenda?

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Sedwill says that was its primary focus. The election was in December 2019, and at first the primary focus was on Brexit.

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Q: Do you agree that cabinet is more “grounded” than a cabal of advisers in No 10?

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Yes, says Sedwill. He says ministers are constituency MPs. That means they are exposed to the views of the public in a way that advisers are not. He says he always encouraged ministers to remember that.

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Q: And the perspective that cabinet could bring was of extra value?

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Yes, says Sedwill.

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Q: Do you think cabinet governance was undermined during Covid?

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Sedwill says the attacks on cabinet did undermine its authority. But the formal decisions were taken in cabinet, he says.

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He says he ensured decisions were properly minuted and properly taken.

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Q: But there was tension between No 10 and cabinet, wasn’t there?

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Sedwill says he did need to remind Boris Johnson of involving cabinet colleagues in the formulation of decisions.

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n

I did need to remind him of the importance of involving Cabinet colleagues not just in the formal decision but formulation of that decision.

n

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It is normal for a PM to talk to his team before a decision gets taken, he says.

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Q: Why did you have to speak to the PM about this?

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Sedwill says Helen MacNamara covered this in her evidence last week. During Brexit, ministers would go into cabinet meetings having not had the chance to read papers days in advance. They would only be shown documents in a reading room. This system was in place in response to leaks.

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During Covid that precise system was not in place. But he says the PM did go into cabinet with a firm position of his own, and that affected the candour of cabinet decisions.

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says he had to remind Boris Johnson of importance of involving cabinet ministers in key decisions”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Wed 8 Nov 2023 08.35 EST”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Wed 8 Nov 2023 04.25 EST”},{“id”:”654b5c208f08015ffd30cd9d”,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Mark Sedwill, the former cabinet secretary, has just started giving evidence to the Covid inquiry. There is a live feed here.

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Yesterday the hearing was shown an exchange of messages between Sedwill and Simon Case, who succeeded him as cabinet secretary, in which Case said he had “never seen a bunch of people less well equipped to run the country” than Boris Johnson and his team.

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Sedwill was originally national security adviser and he became cabinet secretary, combining the job with the security post, when Jeremy Heywood, his predecessor, fell ill. At the time, and afterwards, many people felt merging the two jobs like this was not ideal.

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Last week the inquiry saw evidence showing that on Thursday 12 March, less than a week before Boris Johnson ordered people to stay at home, Sedwill was still pushing the “herd immunity” approach to Covid.

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The inquiry also seen evidence showing Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief adviser, being insulting and abusive about Sedwill in private. Last week Cummings was asked about messages he sent saying Sedwill was “out to lunch” and “hasn’t a scooby [clue] what’s going on”. In response, Cummings claimed he always had a good relationship with Sedwill.

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Sayeeda Warsi, a former Conservative party chair, has said that Keir Starmer was right to criticise Suella Braverman, the home secretary, in his speech in the Commons yesterday. She has also accused Braverman of increasing the prospect of rightwing extremists trying to disrupt the pro-Palestinian demonstration planned for Saturday.

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Warsi posted these messages on X.

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n

“The job of the police is hard enough already without the Home Secretary using it as a platform for her own political ambitions”
We all need to say this
The Home Sec through her rhetoric & culture wars makes our country unsafe -she is dangerous & divisive and not fit for office

n

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“The job of the police is hard enough already without the Home Secretary using it as a platform for her own political ambitions”
We all need to say this
The Home Sec through her rhetoric & culture wars makes our country unsafe -she is dangerous & divisive and not fit for office https://t.co/y20Xtbp6EX

— Sayeeda Warsi (@SayeedaWarsi) November 8, 2023

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Good morning. It took a month, but Keir Starmer has now received the first resignation from a Labour frontbencher over his stance on the Israel-Hamas war. At council level several dozen councillors have already resigned, either because of the LBC interview Starmer gave shortly after the war started in which he appeared to back Israel’s decision to cut off food, water and power supplies to Gaza, and partly because Starmer is refusing to back calls for a ceasefire. Many members and supporters are also furious, particular in constituencies with large Muslim populations. Starmer has changed his tone a lot since the LBC interview, and taken time to defend his position at length. But Imran Hussain’s resignation is a moment of peril because it could encourage other frontbenchers who share his concerns to quit too. Hussain says a ceasefire is “essential to ending the bloodshed”.

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Here is Aletha Adu’s story about the resignation.

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This morning Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, was giving interviews, and this is what she said on the Today programme when asked what she would says to Hussain. She replied:

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n

We all want to see more humanitarian aid getting into Gaza. We want to see humanitarian pauses. And of course, it’s important that Israel upholds international law. I do recognise the strength of feeling across our party on it …

n

The events that we saw on 7 October were sickening acts of utter barbarity and brutality. But every day on our screens we also see the suffering of Palestinian children and it is right that everything possible is done to alleviate that plight.

n

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Asked what Labour calling for humanitarian pauses, but not for a ceasefire, she said:

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n

[A ceasefire] would freeze the conflict in time. It risks allowing Hamas to regroup and to perpetuate further terrible atrocities that they’ve said that they want the opportunity to do. That humanitarian pause to allow for extra time for aid to get into Gaza is in line with what the US are calling for.

n

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Labour HQ is saying the same thing. This is how a spokesperson responded to Hussain’s resignation.

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n

Labour fully understands calls for a ceasefire. Everybody wants to see an end to the shocking images we are seeing in Gaza. We need to see all hostages released and aid getting to those most in need.

n

But a ceasefire now will only freeze this conflict and would leave hostages in Gaza and Hamas with the infrastructure and capability to carry out the sort of attack we saw on October 7.

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International law must be followed at all times and innocent civilians must be protected. Labour is calling for humanitarian pauses in the fighting.

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This is the best and most realistic way to address the humanitarian emergency in Gaza and is a position shared by our major allies.

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Here is the agenda for the day.

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9am: Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, takes part in an LBC phone-in.

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Morning: Rishi Sunak is visiting a school in Lincolnshire.

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10am: Mark Sedwill, the former cabinet secretary, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry.

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11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

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11.30am: Andrew Mitchell, the developmen minister, is due to give a statement to MPs about the Israel-Gaza war.

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Around 12.30pm: Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, and Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, open the second day of debate on the king’s speech.

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1.30pm: Sir Mark Rowley, commissioner of the Metropolitan police, speaks at an Institute for Government event.

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2pm: Claire Coutinho, the energy secretary, gives evidence to the Commons energy security and net zero committee.

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2pm: Justin Tomlinson, the former minister for the disabled, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry.

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2.30pm: Amanda Spielman, head of Ofsted, gives evidence to the Commons culture committee.

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If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line; privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate); or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.

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Key events

Tory peer Nicholas Soames backs Met’s decision to allow pro-Palestinian march and urges PM not to play politics with issue

Rajeev Syal

Nicholas Soames, the Tory peer and grandson of Winston Churchill, has said that Rishi Sunak’s government should be “very careful” about “playing politics” with fundamental British freedoms.

Referring to government moves to stop the pro-Palestinian march going ahead in London on Saturday, Soames told the Guardian:

The government needs to proceed extremely carefully in this matter. Tens of millions of people died in two world wars so that British people have the right and freedom to express their beliefs. You cannot just decide that this is not the case and put the head of the Met under this kind of pressure.

If the Met chief, who I have a great deal of time for, says there is no good reason to ban the march, there is no good reason for banning the march. Most of the people who plan to attend the march have a point to make and plan to do so peacefully. If a small number of people cause trouble, the police can deal with it,

The government needs to be very careful to make sure they do not look as if they are playing politics. They need to be very careful that this is not some sort of gimmick. Operational matters are for the commissioner. It is his judgment that should count and I would caution the government to be very cautious about eroding freedoms.

Keith shows Sedwill an email from Simon Case (who succeeded Sedwill as cabinet secretary) in which Case praised for Sedwill for arranging not to let Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, and Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, to attend a meeting where the lifting of restrictions was discussed in May 2020. Case said the decision to exclude the two was a “genius” move, which helped a decision to be taken.

Sedwill says Johnson was at his best in small meetings. He says Vallance and Whitty had plenty of access to Johnson anyway, and he says Vallance was happy with what was agreed.

They have now stopped for lunch.

No 10 rejects claim Sunak trying to pressure Met into banning pro-Palestinian march by vowing to hold it ‘accountable’

Downing Street has rejected claims that Rishi Sunak’s comment this morning about holding the Metropolitan police “accountable” for its decision to allow the pro-Palestinian march to go ahead on Saturday amounted to putting pressure on the commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley.

When this claim was put to him, the PM’s spokesperson replied:

No, that’s part and parcel of how government and the Met operate. The Met are operationally independent, it’s the job of the prime minister and the government to hold them to account for their approach. So, that is what the prime minister will be doing.

Keith asks Sedwill about a note he wrote to the PM as the first wave of Covid was coming to an end saying it appeared the UK was doing worse than other countries.

Sedwill says he was referring to the excess deaths figures, which seemed to show the UK doing worse than comparable countries.

Keith is now asking about what happened when Boris Johnson fell ill.

Sedwill says it was clear that Dominic Raab, the first secretary, should take over in the event of Johnson being incapacitated.

Q: When Johnson came back to work, to what extent was he affected by his illness?

Sedwill says there is a broader point about Johnson’s decision-making style.

Keith says they will come back to that.

Sedwill says he will leave that for now.

But he says it took Johnson a long time to recover. The issue was stamina, he says.

Sedwill says he thinks Covid deaths would have been reduced if ‘stay at home’ order had been given earlier

Sedwill accepts that the “stay at home” order given on 16 March could have been given earlier.

Q: And if it had, the lockdown could have been avoided?

Sedwill says that is possible. But he says he is “highly sceptical” about whether the lockdown could have been avoided entirely.

He says proper academic research is needed to show what might have happened if the soft lockdown had happened earlier.

But he says he accepts that acting early would probably have had a “positive effect” on casualties.

It might not have avoided the need for lockdown. It is more likely to have had an impact on the duration of the lockdown, he says.

Keith is now asking about the lockdown decision announced on Monday 23 March.

He says Boris Johnson started work on what he was going to say at 2.05pm on the Monday.

But the Cobra meeting where this was discussed did not take place until 5pm, and the cabinet meeting to discuss this did not take place until the following day.

He says this implies the decision was not taken by cabinet – even though Sedwill said earlier cabinet should be the key decision-making body.

Sedwill accepts this. But he says the decision to have a lockdown had been taken in a separate Covid-S meeting. He says that was constitutionally proper.

Sedwill apologises for proposing in private chickenpox party-type approach to Covid, saying it now sounds ‘heartless’

Keith asks about the comment from Sedwill implying a chickenpox party approach might work for Covid.

Sedwill says this remark was made before the meetings had taken place where No 10 realised a new approach was needed. He says when Ben Warner, another official, challenged what he said, he realised the chickenpox analogy was inappropriate. He says this was a remark made in private.

He says:

These were private exchanges and I certainly had not expected for this to become public.

I understand how, in particular, the interpretation that has been put on it, it must have come across as someone in my role was both heartless and thoughtless about this, and I genuinely am neither. But I do understand the distress that must have caused and I apologise for that.

Keith is now asking about the switch to a suppression strategy.

Sedwill says did not see this as a switch from plan A to plan B. He says he thought this was an acceleration and intensification of measures Sage had already said might be necessary.

How Sedwill told Cummings he would not let key decisions be taken by PM and ‘bunch of Spads’ with no ministers or experts

Keith is now showing the inquiry an exchange of emails between Dominic Cummings and Sedwill on 11 March 2020. Cummings wanted to set up a new meeting to deal with Covid decisions.

In his reply, Sedwill said he objected to the idea that key decisions would be taken by “a bunch of No 10 Spads (special advisers)“ and the PM, with no ministers, no experts and no scientists there. “We are not running a dictatorship here,” he said.

We are not running a dictatorship here and the PM is not taking nationally significant decisions with a bunch of No10 SpAds and no ministers, no operational experts and no scientists. If necessary, I will take over the 8:15 slot and chair a daily meeting myself.

Sedwill says the email expressed “pretty pungently my views about collective government”.

At the inquiry Keith showed Sedwill this document, from a report from the civil contingencies secretariat, illustrating possible deaths from Covid. It was drawn up on 28 February 2020.

Keith asked why levels of alarm in government were not higher as a result. “They should have been,” Sedwill said.