Matt Hancock appears for second day of evidence to Covid inquiry – UK politics live

Good morning and welcome to the UK politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news from Westminster on this bitterly cold first day of December.

Stay tuned for the second day of Matt Hancock’s evidence to the Covid inquiry here in London. He began yesterday by saying that tens of thousands of lives could have been saved if the UK had locked down three weeks earlier.

The former health secretary said his staff were abused by Dominic Cummings and that Johnson’s then chief adviser attempted to exclude ministers and even Johnson himself from key decisions at the start of the pandemic, hampering the government’s response.

“It inculcated a culture of fear, whereas what we needed was a culture where everybody was brought to the table and given their heads to do their level best in a once-in-a-generation crisis,” said Hancock. “The way to lead in a crisis like this is to give people the confidence to do what they think needs to happen. And it caused the opposite of that.”

Hancock argued that in retrospect the ideal date for a first lockdown would have been three weeks earlier than the eventual date of 23 March 2020, saying this could have prevented about 90% of the death toll in the first Covid wave, or more than 30,000 lives.

His next round of evidence giving is due to begin at 10am and I will be bringing you all the latest from that – and any other breaking news stories from the world of UK politics – as it happens.