Michael Gove has apologised to the victims of COVID as began giving his evidence to the COVID Inquiry this morning but also suggested that the virus could have been man made adding that the country was preparing for a flu pandemic
Answering questions he began by saying:
“I want to take this opportunity to apologise to the victims who endured so much loss as a result of the mistakes made in response to the pandemic.. I must take my share of the responsibility for that.. Politicians are human beings, we make mistakes, we make errors”
He listed five areas of failure Too slow to lockdown in March,Should have taken stricter measures in Oct,Testing approach was wrong, Didn’t pay attention to effect on children and PPE procurement
He told the Inquiry that Johnsons government executed Brexit well, the covid vaccine roll out well, but there are other areas where it would be wrong to reward ourselves high marks
“The Cabinet Office has operated in a way which is not as effective as it should be for the effective delivery of government policy. Both for business as usual and in response to crisis”
“Focus was on Brexit.. I was aware of dysfunction.. Some parts of Cabinet Office did not believe they were accountable, I referred to them as the Dark Side Of The Moon, because they were obscured from accountability
Asked about the preparedness of the country he said that
“we were relatively well prepared as a country, by the assurances given by the government. I took those on trust”
Gove thought that at the beginning of March,The Government was undereacting to the impending crisis
“On 9-10 March I believed we were underacting.. But the Prime Minister’s concern was that if we paralyse the economy there would be undoubted costs and before taking a grave steps we had to be absolutely certain”
