Andy Burnham has told the COVID inquiry that “all hell broke loose” when Manchester was put under local restrictions in July 2020.
Questioned on the decision that saw different areas of the region put in different restrictions that summer he said that he had received “minimal notice” from the then Health Secretary Matt Hancock.
“This was as chaotic as it gets – he gave me an hour to speak to local leaders.”
He says his social media feed was “inundated” with people concerned about whether they could actually go to work the following day.
“What I remember is about 8 o’clock that night, the health secretary gave a very cursory announcement to a TV camera in 4 Millbank that we would be going under these restrictions and then all hell broke loose.”
Burnham said he was furious over a meeting of The Government’s Covid committee to decide Tier 3 restrictions in Nov 2020.
“It wasn’t me that was behaving appallingly – it was the people in that room that were behaving appallingly”
“They were about to impose a policy on Greater Manchester that they knew didn’t work”.
“They sat in that room and they imposed a policy they had been advised by SAGE and others would not work”.
Burnham said that he thought that the region was put into Tier 3 restrictions as a punishment for his defiance earlier
He quoted a passage from the minutes of the meeting
“Lancashire should have a lighter set of measures imposed than Greater Manchester since they had shown a greater willingness to co-operate. Tougher measures should be imposed on Greater Manchester that day.”
Burnham also said that he thought a more devolved approach to the pandemic would be a safer approach
“When we were about to have Tier 3 imposed on 20th of October 2020, I had a call with Prime Minister Boris Johnson. He was saying we need to agree with Tier 3 and support. And I said we can’t, it’s not enough. We’ve been under restrictions for a long time. He said, what do you mean? I said we’ve been under restrictions since July, you do know about that, dont you? To me it didn’t seem that he did know about that”
Asked if he was invited to any COBR meetings the Mayor said no
The Mayor expressed surprise that he was not invited to attend any of the COBR meetings at the start of the pandemic
“DId you ask to attend the COBR meetings?”
AB, “Repeatedly.. I have a memory of chairing a weekly meeting during swine flu where the Cabinet office you could bring in voices from all over the country. It was the way covid COBR meetings should have been done”
“What benefit would attending COBR have given you?”
To which Burnham replied
“A structured environment where serious issues could have been properly raised. For example an issue we raised right though and never got a response: financial support for people on the lowest incomes to isolate. We repeatedly raised that issue. Also people excluded from public support: the self employed, the freelancers. We raised these in the media because we had no alternative”
On the subject of Eat Out to help out, The Mayor said that
“There was a strong feeling that Eat Out To Help Out had caused some of the problems that Bolton were experiencing”
Earlier the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan told the inquiry said that lives could have been saved’ if he had been allowed to join early Cobra meetings about Covid.
He told the Covid Inquiry that his requests to join were blocked because no other mayors would be in attendance.
