0:01

How many people are open and

0:04

transparent about the worst mistakes they've

0:06

made in their lives? And let's

0:08

be realistic about it. I

0:10

think for me, that's why I think it's a shame

0:12

that it's becoming such a long-winded

0:14

inquiry, because the learning

0:17

is all there today. You don't need

0:19

four years to plough through it, and

0:21

if we know what the learning is today,

0:24

we can start to do something about

0:26

it rather than wait.

0:30

The worst mistakes of our lives, that's

0:33

quite a strong statement. But

0:35

in the face of major disasters, it

0:38

is perhaps inevitable there

0:40

will be missteps. It's good to be

0:42

able to, I hope, be humble enough

0:44

to reflect and say, actually, we can learn

0:46

from some of this stuff in the future.

0:48

And when the dust settles, people

0:51

will be asked to account for their actions. We

0:53

want to get to the truth. We want

0:56

to understand what happened,

0:58

so why certain decisions were taken,

1:00

by whom, and

1:03

primarily, we want

1:06

to

1:06

save lives in future.

1:09

The inquiry has just begun, but

1:11

many people feel they are still waiting

1:14

too long for answers. And as

1:16

a journalist, it's my job to

1:18

challenge those in authority. What

1:21

do you think has been worse for the economy, though, COVID,

1:23

all that budget? Even if at times, these

1:26

questions might make people feel

1:28

uncomfortable.

1:29

I think it was very stressful, not

1:31

for me, but for others and myself.

1:34

But I think there was very swift action. I was sacked. The

1:37

Prime Minister, I think, left within a week.

1:39

Having moments where you step back

1:42

can provide insight. How's

1:44

history going to judge the government

1:47

in terms of their response to COVID?

1:49

I think people will say that

1:51

the government did its best, but

1:53

I think there was also

1:56

a lot of

1:57

muddle and confusion. is

2:00

most critical when much of the collateral

2:03

damage seems to have fallen on

2:05

the most vulnerable in society.

2:07

And there was a moment when we could have grabbed it and

2:09

said, okay, we're going to do the best we can for our

2:11

children, and we just fell away.

2:14

Because sometimes there's no

2:16

time to wait. We literally just fell

2:18

away and didn't meet the challenge. You're

2:20

listening to the Lockdown Files podcast

2:23

from The Telegraph. Episode

2:25

Five, The Fall Out.

2:29

Closing schools during COVID was

2:31

the biggest disruption to children's education

2:34

since the Second World War. When

2:37

we got hold of Matt Hancock's WhatsApps,

2:40

my colleague Hailey Dixon started to

2:42

piece together the debate around

2:44

school closures,

2:46

and what she found was unsettling.

2:49

Here's Hailey back in that hot, sweaty

2:51

room we used to go through the messages.

2:53

It will make a lot of parents and

2:56

children who've missed out on almost a

2:58

year's worth of education very angry to see that they

3:00

were joking about this behind

3:02

people's backs. In late December 2020,

3:05

Sir Gavin Williamson, the then education

3:08

secretary, was fighting to keep

3:10

schools open. And yet... Behind

3:13

the scenes, while he's making these arguments, Matt

3:15

Hancock is talking with his advisers and with

3:17

other ministers, and he really seems to be really

3:19

cooling him. Matt Hancock said that he was having

3:22

to turn the volume down and

3:24

just generally taking the mickey out of Gavin. It

3:26

doesn't seem like Hancock wants

3:28

to even listen to Williamson's argument.

3:32

And there's also some evidence that Matt

3:34

Hancock is trying to go

3:36

behind these meetings in which they're discussing

3:38

schools opening, which ministers were really trying

3:40

to keep schools open, and

3:43

create what he calls as a rear guard action in

3:45

which he's trying to persuade people that

3:47

the action on schools need to be tougher. This

3:49

rear guard action appeared successful.

3:52

On 4 January 2021, most

3:56

of England's primary schools did reopen,

3:58

but only for one day. Gavin

4:01

Williamson might have lost the fight but

4:03

his efforts weren't unnoticed. So

4:06

if you were to ask me in that December-January

4:08

did the Department of Education fight to keep schools

4:10

open? From everything I know,

4:13

yes they did and I'm actually grateful to the Secretary

4:15

of State and senior officials for the

4:17

efforts they made. That's Amanda Spielman,

4:20

Chief Inspector at Ofsted.

4:22

That's the organisation which evaluates

4:24

schools. She's speaking to my

4:26

colleague Janet. And especially it

4:28

is fashionable to give Gavin no credit for anything

4:31

and he did fight. Almost

4:33

everyone we speak to for this podcast identifies

4:36

closing schools as one of the biggest

4:39

errors of the pandemic.

4:40

At what stage did you think actually that

4:43

was a mistake? Was it when you became Education

4:45

Secretary? No, when

4:47

I was a parent at home. Fair enough.

4:49

And the house was on tender hooks. I don't

4:51

ever want schools to close again. Do

4:54

you think it was justified to close

4:56

the schools as well as long as we

4:58

did? Well no. I mean for

5:01

the first lockdown, yes because of the ignorance

5:03

but I think it was a dreadful thing to

5:05

do it beyond that. It

5:08

was just appalling actually.

5:10

When the wrong decisions are made the

5:12

consequences can be very long

5:14

lasting. This is something Liz

5:17

and her 10-year-old daughter Amber who

5:19

you met in episode four know all

5:22

too well. She wants to go to

5:24

school. That's what she wants. More than

5:26

anything in the world she wants to be

5:28

like everybody else and go to school and

5:30

just fade into the background. That's

5:33

all she wants.

5:33

Growing up, Amber's autism

5:36

meant she sometimes missed school when

5:38

the usual schedule was upended.

5:41

Like in the lead up to Christmas when... They're

5:43

doing carols singing and Santa comes in

5:45

and so if you're a child... Just before

5:47

lockdown she was going in nearly every

5:50

day

5:51

but now... Her current attendance

5:53

is something like 62% and

5:56

obviously rapidly

5:58

declining. Liz knows. just

6:00

how hard her daughter is trying.

6:03

If we get as far as leaving the house, she

6:06

just freezes. It's like an anxiety

6:08

takes over. One day, the day you're talking...

6:11

One day, it got so bad that

6:13

Amber found herself completely stuck.

6:16

I think she knows that once she comes

6:18

in, that's kind of her giving up, so she just lay

6:20

prone on the driveway for about

6:23

an hour and a half until I

6:25

said, look, I'm making the decision, you know. I'm making

6:27

the decision that you're not going to school. You're

6:29

not making

6:29

the decision, I'm doing it. It's like

6:31

Amber is paralysed. All

6:33

Liz can do is sit with her. Because

6:36

she can't... She

6:39

can't move. Amber

6:41

isn't alone. Almost a quarter of

6:43

children in England are now persistently

6:46

absent. It means they're missing

6:48

the equivalent of one school day

6:51

every fortnight, at least. It's

6:54

just one example of the collateral

6:56

damage, the fallout of repeated

6:59

school closures. In February 2021,

7:02

Boris Johnson put Sir Kevin Collins in

7:05

charge of solving this crisis in

7:07

education.

7:08

My colleague Catherine tracked him down.

7:11

You're referred to as the catch-up czar. Is that a

7:13

fair summary of your...? Not really. I

7:15

never like... I don't like either catch-up czar,

7:17

to be honest with you. So we

7:20

managed to get it to, sort of, education

7:23

recovery commissioner.

7:24

When he first met with the then Prime

7:26

Minister... I was struck by the

7:29

ambition to really

7:31

respond to this and to do everything we

7:33

could. And the initial charge to

7:35

me was, what would it take to

7:37

recover in this

7:39

parliament for our children? So there was a sort of three-year

7:41

window. What would it take to recover the loss?

7:44

For Collins, the race was on. Children

7:47

in England had lost up to 110 classroom days. He

7:51

felt there was only one way to make

7:53

this right.

7:55

Students needed to get back as many

7:57

of the hours they'd lost during the pandemic

7:59

as possible. He drew up a plan

8:01

based around what he called the three

8:04

T's, training,

8:06

tutoring. And then the third T, and this

8:08

was the one that was problematic

8:11

in the end, was time. I

8:13

wanted to increase the time children spent at school

8:16

for two things. Firstly so that

8:19

you could go back to the rich and broad experiences,

8:22

the sport, the drama, the choir, all

8:24

the things that really matter in building social

8:26

skills that had been dropped off. We wanted

8:28

more time to do more of that. But we

8:30

also needed to find time to do the tutoring, because

8:33

you don't want tutoring to be done instead of a good English

8:35

lesson. It's as well as, or

8:38

pull you out of a PE lesson to do tutoring, because then you're

8:40

narrowing the curriculum again. So we wanted time.

8:42

But as the saying goes, time

8:44

is money. Collins's plan

8:47

would have cost the government £15 billion. And

8:51

when ministers announced their catch-up scheme

8:53

at the start of June 2021, his proposed

8:56

extension to the school day

8:58

was nowhere to be seen.

9:00

Collins recalls when they broke the news to him.

9:03

And then I at that meeting very

9:05

clearly said, you're making a huge mistake.

9:08

Who was in that meeting? Prime Minister,

9:11

Chancellor and Secretary of Education.

9:14

And what did you say to them? I

9:16

kind of, I knew that it was,

9:19

so I had something prepared and I said, I'm

9:24

sorry, you're making a huge error.

9:26

You're basically a lot of- He looked the

9:28

assembled ministers straight in the

9:31

eyes and said, this is the biggest disruption

9:33

in education that a generation of children have faced and

9:35

we have the responsibility as adults at this moment

9:37

and we are failing our children.

9:39

And then he quit. Nadeem

9:41

Zahawi replaced Gavin Williamson

9:44

as Education Secretary in September 2021.

9:48

So he helped implement this

9:50

watered down plan.

9:52

When we met, he told me, I

9:54

know Kevin Collins. I've got

9:56

a lot of time for him. When I looked at the evidence, my- very

10:00

strong view was look, we were about

10:02

to spend five billion on

10:05

catch-up. Big part of that was going

10:07

into the national

10:09

tutoring programme. He gave some insight

10:12

into why the government rejected Collins's

10:14

full proposal. Let's look at the

10:17

evidence, right, after you've spent the five billion, let's

10:19

look at where we are in terms, have those

10:21

children been able to catch up?

10:24

And then I was completely open to going

10:26

further if we needed to. But for

10:28

Collins,

10:29

no delay was acceptable.

10:31

This is the chance, this is the moment and

10:34

we're failing and it's a mistake.

10:36

Zahawi dismisses the so-called

10:38

catch-ups are for getting stuck

10:41

on arguing about whether it should be 15 billion

10:43

or 5 billion. But Collins said

10:45

he knew the difference all those

10:48

billions would have made. There was a moment

10:50

when we could have grabbed it and said okay

10:52

we're going to do the best we can for our children

10:54

and we just fell away. We

10:56

literally just fell away and didn't meet the challenge

10:59

in my view. And that's

11:01

a kind of lasting shame.

11:07

What's worth pointing out here is

11:10

during the pandemic government spending

11:12

in other areas was massive. My

11:14

colleague Catherine caught up with Lord Theo

11:17

Agnew, Minister in charge of fraud.

11:19

At least he was until... Given

11:22

that I'm the Minister for counter fraud, it feels somewhat

11:24

dishonest to stay on in that role if I'm

11:26

incapable of doing it properly, let

11:28

alone defending our track record.

11:32

It is that this for this reason that I've sadly

11:34

decided to tender my resignation as a Minister

11:36

across the Treasury and Cabinet Office with

11:39

immediate effect.

11:40

Just like Sir Kevin Collins, Agnew

11:42

resigned in protest. As

11:44

he saw it, the Treasury's Covid support

11:47

schemes had left the public purse

11:49

leaking like a sieve. Early

11:51

on in his career he worked in debt collection

11:54

so he's used to catching

11:55

crooks. I understand

11:57

fraudulent mind and

12:00

and we left ourselves wide open. In

12:02

April 2020, Agnew tried to get

12:04

the Treasury Ministers to build in some

12:07

basic anti-money laundering checks

12:10

into the bounce-back loan scheme.

12:11

I had some real rouse with them, but

12:13

they wouldn't listen. Why wouldn't

12:15

they listen? Because they were spooked. Basically,

12:18

the mantra was we will see the productive

12:20

capacity of the economy destroyed unless we

12:22

get this money out

12:23

the door tomorrow. To which

12:25

I said this will hardly, it might delay it a day

12:28

to do these extra checks, but it

12:30

ain't going to make a

12:32

material difference. And

12:34

you will be giving money to bad people.

12:39

Prior to taking up the education portfolio

12:41

in September 2021, Nadeem Zahawi was a junior

12:45

minister in the business department. I

12:48

put to him the kind of egregious examples

12:51

of pandemic fraud that Agnew

12:53

railed against.

12:54

It seems that in some cases,

12:57

some individuals took out 10, 20 of these bounce-back

13:00

loans. There's

13:02

a point where it starts to look crazy.

13:04

And that's where he's

13:06

got a point. We were

13:08

moving at speed, but there's certainly less

13:11

to learn. And I would say we would

13:13

be unwise

13:15

to simply just brush that off

13:18

and say no, everything. It wasn't. We

13:20

could have done better. I think it's better to say

13:22

actually we will learn from

13:25

that particular episode and do

13:27

better next time. Hopefully there isn't a next time

13:29

with another virus, but in an

13:31

emergency, maybe

13:34

in a comic one, where we would actually

13:37

exercise more rigor as to how we do these

13:39

things.

13:39

Here he admitted that the government

13:41

could have done better. But when it comes

13:44

to the school catch-up program, his

13:46

apparent commitment to fiscal responsibility

13:49

rings slightly hollow. After

13:52

all, according to Lord Agnew, his

13:54

department had essentially looked on

13:56

as criminals exploited COVID

13:59

schemes. Official figures

14:01

show the public purse was defrauded

14:03

of £7.3 billion. That's

14:08

enough to fund Sir Kevin Collins's

14:10

catch-up programme for a year

14:12

and a half.

14:13

Today's operation is

14:15

to do with a bounce-back loan fraud. He

14:18

fortunately obtained a £50,000 loan

14:21

by claiming that he's a landscape gardener.

14:24

People suspected of illegally

14:25

claiming tens of thousands

14:28

of pounds from the government's bounce-back

14:30

loan scheme. The amount of money

14:32

lost to fraud is something many

14:34

of our interviewees acknowledge as a problem.

14:38

It's something that seems to plague Lord

14:40

Agnew. It's just heartbreaking

14:43

and so that's why this

14:45

whole wasting government gets me so wound

14:47

up. Having retired from his ministerial

14:50

post, Agnew tells Catherine

14:52

that he's about running the Academy Trust

14:54

he founded ten years ago.

14:56

But this gives him no respite.

14:59

Every day he's confronted with the

15:01

fallout of the government's Covid policies.

15:04

These

15:04

children have been de-socialised.

15:07

I mean we have an epidemic of what's

15:09

called persistent absence in schools. These

15:11

are children who are refuses

15:13

to go.

15:14

An epidemic of school refusal.

15:17

Children struggling just like

15:20

Amber. We're sending vans

15:22

and buses around to get these kids and

15:25

the parents are saying he or she won't leave

15:27

her bedroom.

15:27

And he says... I get frustrated

15:30

because we're so short of money in the school system

15:32

at the moment. And I see

15:34

this money being banded about

15:36

when I want to help those

15:38

kids who are persistently absent. Because if they don't

15:41

get back into school in the next year

15:43

or so, they're lost to education and they're

15:45

done. That's

16:00

Offstead's Amanda Spielman again. Teachers'

16:03

eyes on children to spot when things

16:06

are going wrong are really, really important.

16:08

And some of the awful things we know about that

16:11

happened during lockdown, I'm

16:13

quite sure if there'd been more

16:16

eyes on those children, some of them,

16:18

not all of them, but some of them might have been averted.

16:21

That's coming up in the second half.

16:30

Lockdown was meant to keep people safe,

16:33

but for children living in abusive families,

16:36

home was the most dangerous place

16:38

they could be.

16:40

When schools closed in March 2020, vulnerable

16:43

children, or those with key worker

16:45

parents, were allowed to keep going

16:48

into classrooms. But this didn't

16:50

always happen. My colleague

16:52

Sophie found a case which demonstrates

16:54

this issue really clearly. I'll

16:57

let her tell you about it. Back

16:59

in January, I came across this story in

17:01

a paper. The headline was, convicted

17:04

paedophile given custody of girl he got pregnant

17:06

after years of horrific abuse.

17:08

Reading the article, I realised that the young girl,

17:11

given the pseudonym Ruby, would likely

17:13

have been desperately trying to get help while

17:15

the country was in lockdown.

17:17

I did some research and read the serious

17:19

case review. It was carried out by the

17:21

Independent Children's safeguarding partnership

17:23

in Leeds. I learnt that before

17:26

the pandemic, a man called Matthew,

17:28

not his real name, had been granted

17:30

custody of Ruby and her three younger siblings,

17:33

despite being a registered sex offender. He

17:35

had served a prison sentence for sexually abusing

17:38

young boys when he was a teenager.

17:40

To understand why no one acted sooner

17:42

to protect Ruby and her siblings, Sophie

17:45

tracked down the chair of the safeguarding

17:47

panel who investigated her case.

17:50

My name is Josephine Desangara, and I

17:53

am the Independent Safeguarding

17:55

Chair for the Leeds Children's Partnership.

17:59

leads. It's Sangeara's job to investigate

18:02

why this happened. The question of how

18:04

a registered sex offender could

18:07

be given full custody of children

18:09

is one that

18:11

really made me

18:14

not sleep at night. It's one of those things that, and

18:16

that's the question, isn't it? But

18:18

what we have to remember is

18:20

this was approved by

18:23

a court in England. But

18:26

that court is going

18:28

to be informed through

18:30

reports. In these reports,

18:33

Matthew was assessed by various professionals.

18:36

Inexplicably, despite his criminal

18:38

history, at no point did they

18:40

check the sexual abuse risk he posed to his

18:42

adopted children. In these reports,

18:45

Matthew was reviewed by various professionals.

18:48

Inexplicably, despite his

18:50

criminal history, the sexual abuse

18:52

risk he posed to Ruby was never

18:55

adequately assessed. For Ruby,

18:58

a young teen, trapped at home with

19:00

her abuser, lockdown was

19:02

a perfect storm.

19:04

This review would respectfully, I would

19:06

respectfully say, whether enough

19:08

consideration was given during lockdown

19:11

to the possible increased risk of Matthew

19:14

re-offending,

19:15

given that he's now at home with children

19:18

who are not allowed to leave the house. In her

19:20

expert opinion, the Covid pandemic

19:22

was detrimental to Ruby

19:24

as it reduced her opportunities to

19:26

disclose her abuse whilst simultaneously

19:29

affording Matthew privacy.

19:32

So a month after the UK had entered lockdown,

19:34

Ruby ran away from home, ending

19:37

up on a stranger's doorstep, asking

19:39

for help.

19:40

Despite the neighbour calling the police to tell

19:42

them about Ruby's escape attempt, no

19:44

officer followed this up. And nearly

19:46

a year later, Ruby had become pregnant

19:49

and sought out an abortion. When

19:51

she went to the doctors with

19:54

her guardian,

19:56

she basically told the story that I had

20:00

been sleeping with a boy of my same

20:02

age etc. The GP

20:05

was very concerned. Because

20:07

Ruby was underage, the authorities

20:10

were alerted.

20:11

One police officer had a feeling that

20:13

something wasn't right and arranged

20:15

for paternity testing.

20:17

It turned out that she

20:19

had experienced repeated serious sexual

20:22

abuse over a period of a number of years and

20:25

the child that she was carrying

20:27

was genetically tested. Who was the father?

20:29

It was her guardian Matthew.

20:32

I asked Sangara if she felt the government

20:35

had thought hard enough about what would

20:37

happen to society's most vulnerable

20:39

young people once they'd been locked down.

20:42

No I don't. I don't think

20:44

they considered that in terms of

20:46

the impact

20:49

on those living in households where

20:51

they were known to services. But

20:54

equally those who are yet

20:56

to be identified by services.

20:59

And that's a key point with this case.

21:01

Ruby was classed as vulnerable. So

21:04

she should have been at school throughout

21:06

lockdown under the government's guidance.

21:09

But it seems that nobody was asking

21:11

why she wasn't there.

21:13

She just fell through the cracks. Schools

21:15

are the eyes and ears of

21:19

child protection,

21:21

of being able to identify children

21:23

that may be at risk. And teachers comprise

21:26

one of the largest reporters of child

21:28

abuse. So the fact

21:30

that Ruby herself was hoping

21:33

that somebody would see or hear

21:35

her, you know, she attempted to run away from home.

21:37

I absolutely believe that

21:39

if she were in school she would have

21:42

spoken to somebody

21:43

and that would have absolutely helped. Sangara

21:46

saw the fallout of what she sees as

21:48

the government's mismatched priorities among

21:51

the vulnerable children she assessed.

21:53

From her point of view, ministers

21:55

appeared to place more importance on

21:58

Covid rules than the welfare of

22:00

at-risk youth. This is a horrifying

22:03

trend that Sophie picked up on. She

22:05

read dozens of serious case reviews

22:07

into children who had died or

22:09

been seriously harmed during the pandemic.

22:12

When I began to investigate, I discovered

22:14

reviews across the country which found

22:16

that abusers used lockdown as an excuse

22:19

to isolate vulnerable children. Parents

22:22

would keep their children out of sight, claiming

22:24

they were concerned about the family catching the virus.

22:27

People workers couldn't get beyond the doorsteps

22:30

of these homes. They were forced to

22:32

check in on families using Zoom and

22:34

struggled to spot the usual telltale signs

22:36

of abuse. Now that hindsight

22:38

is a wonderful thing, isn't it? And I do

22:41

think Covid restrictions

22:44

did take precedent over keeping children

22:46

safe, actually.

22:50

When

22:50

our own children are saying, I

22:52

wish somebody had seen me on

22:55

my own because I would have said something. What

22:58

they're saying is that's a cry for help. Because

23:00

Ruby was at home, there were fewer

23:02

chances for other people to raise the

23:04

alarm, fewer chances for her to tell

23:07

someone what was happening, fewer

23:09

chances for the agencies working with

23:11

Matthew to spot that he

23:13

posed a risk.

23:15

This

23:15

is a really extreme case, but

23:18

the Independent Safeguarding Review

23:20

found that Ruby suffered more

23:22

as a result of national Covid policies

23:25

brought in to reassure people of

23:27

their safety.

23:28

And as the Children's Commissioner, Dane Rachel

23:31

DeSouza, told my colleague Catherine,

23:34

when it comes to very vulnerable children…

23:36

No failure rate is acceptable,

23:38

right? The cost of failure is so high.

23:40

So to me, that support

23:43

for those children needs to be absolutely

23:46

prioritised. The collateral damage

23:49

that repeated stay-at-home orders inflicted

23:51

on the country is so great

23:53

that many people are now asking, was

23:56

there another way? Was locking down

23:58

the biggest mistake of all?

23:59

I sat down with Kwazi Kwartang.

24:02

During the pandemic he was... Minister

24:05

of State for Energy, I was sent to a state for Bays. Bays.

24:08

That's the former business department. Kwartang

24:10

is of course best known for his chaotic 38

24:13

day stint as Chancellor. More

24:16

on that in a minute. But when I asked

24:18

him to pass judgement on the government's

24:20

decision to lock down, he was pretty

24:22

reflective. The

24:24

test of this is if this were to happen again

24:26

with the same response occur, and I don't think

24:28

it would. I think we would try and keep things

24:30

open for longer and actually deal

24:33

with the threat of the virus.

24:36

But in a less draconian way, we

24:38

would try and isolate and be more

24:40

strategic and focused about how we dealt with it.

24:42

I'm going to interrupt the former Chancellor

24:45

here because the point he's making

24:47

is worthy of explanation. Kwartang

24:50

appears to be advocating for an anti-lockdown

24:52

approach to managing Covid, which

24:55

recommended isolating the vulnerable

24:57

instead of locking down. It was never

24:59

implemented in the UK. And another

25:02

former Conservative Minister, Robert

25:04

Buckland, gave my colleague Sophie

25:06

some context as to why.

25:08

I don't think that we

25:11

have much of a luxury of choice but

25:13

to do the same. I think there are huge drawbacks

25:15

in lockdowns. I don't like them. I

25:18

think what happened with schools was

25:20

a real problem. But you tell me what

25:22

else we could have done in the circumstances. He adds.

25:25

I would say without enthusiasm,

25:27

I thought that the lockdown was

25:30

probably the only option we could have taken at that time.

25:33

Was that the first lockdown or the second

25:35

lockdown or both lockdowns? First lockdown.

25:38

I think the second lockdown was more moot

25:40

but again, bearing in mind the alarming

25:42

number of rising cases, I think that –

25:44

and it was midwinter, if you remember – I

25:47

think that it was sensible

25:49

to do that. He

25:50

acknowledges that it's easy to say

25:52

these things with hindsight. But he

25:54

stresses. I think the economic impact was very

25:57

great. There's no doubt. Do you think it's too much? Well,

25:59

I mean, how much? as too much people will say, well, you know, we were

26:01

saving lives. But I think

26:03

I think it's had a massive impact. And I think

26:06

I don't think it would happen. The response would be the

26:08

whoever's in power. I don't think the response

26:10

would be the same.

26:11

Because now we know the consequences of. Yeah.

26:13

And I think you look at the economic

26:15

aspect of it, the the debts that

26:18

we're in, the fact that taxes have had to

26:20

go up to pay for that those debts, the

26:23

fact that, you know, we're

26:25

not growing very fast.

26:26

Later on in the interview, he

26:29

added, so I think the impacts of it have been

26:31

colossal. And I'm not sure

26:33

that a government would want to go through that again. Of

26:35

course, there is an elephant in the

26:37

room. What do you think has been worse for the economy

26:40

that COVID all that budget? The budget

26:42

was reversed within about two weeks. And

26:45

the interest rates were going up anyway and have gone

26:47

up in the seven months since. Yeah.

26:49

So so I think there was a short term

26:52

impact. I think it was very

26:54

stressful and

26:55

not for me,

26:57

but for others and myself.

27:00

But I think there was very swift action. I was

27:02

sacked. The prime minister, I think, left within a

27:04

week.

27:05

And all the the the. Yeah,

27:08

it was extraordinary. And all the the

27:11

measures in it were reversed.

27:13

So to keep harping back onto

27:15

it, I think is is

27:17

not very constructive. I didn't actually think it

27:20

makes sense. I think we've got to look

27:22

at what's the last budget was.

27:25

We've got to look at where interest rates are now. And

27:28

a lot of that is a lot of the effects

27:30

of the mini budget were reversed very quickly.

27:41

On the 27th of June, when Matt

27:43

Hancock was giving evidence to the Covid

27:45

inquiry, Jean Adamson was

27:47

sitting in the public gallery. Jean

27:50

is a member of the UK Covid-19

27:53

bereaved Families for Justice campaign

27:55

group. It's been quite somber, I

27:58

would say. Yes.

27:59

Is it quite quiet there? Very

28:02

quiet and we'd expect

28:04

that in a courtroom anyway, but I

28:06

think the mood is somber. Good

28:09

morning, my lady. Matt Hancock, MP, please.

28:12

She tells me that in the hearing

28:14

room there were... A few photographs

28:18

of our loved ones, so

28:20

that people

28:22

will not forget that this is what this

28:25

is about. It's about our

28:28

loved one that we've lost. Her journey

28:30

to that courtroom had begun just

28:32

over three years and two months earlier. I

28:35

always remember the day he rang, the

28:37

GP he rang. It was

28:40

Maundy Thursday because it was the day before

28:42

Good Friday, 2020. Her

28:44

father Cleo, a former London

28:46

Underground worker, was in a care home.

28:50

We think your dad has

28:52

Covid and there were several

28:55

other cases in the care home anyway. They

28:59

were really dropping like flies at the time.

29:01

I went in every day over the Easter

29:03

weekend. Good Friday, Saturday,

29:05

Easter Sunday. I

29:10

could only speak to him at the window

29:12

though. I couldn't go in. So

29:15

I was...

29:17

Well, that was the only way

29:19

that I could reach him.

29:23

It's heartbreaking that as

29:26

he lay there

29:29

on his deathbed, that

29:30

I wasn't able to just

29:33

hold his hand or reach

29:36

out and comfort him in any way. Yeah,

29:40

it's something that

29:42

I'll live with, haunt

29:43

me for the rest of my life really. Yeah,

29:46

I can imagine it. It must be terrible and really

29:48

painful. You only get one chance to say

29:50

goodbye, don't you?

29:59

victims. Do you feel marginalised?

30:03

Oh yes we do. We absolutely do.

30:05

Yes, we felt that way for some

30:07

time

30:08

and our pleas have

30:11

fallen on deaf ears so

30:13

far. The safeguarding expert in Ruby's

30:16

case, Jasvinder Sangeira, said Baroness

30:18

Hallett should listen to Those

30:20

that were

30:21

directly impacted by

30:23

Covid due to vulnerability.

30:28

So Ruby's voice would be a good one. You

30:31

know, where are the other children? When

30:35

the enquiries draft terms of reference

30:37

were initially published last year, the words

30:40

child and children were

30:43

missing entirely and a date

30:45

for this module still hasn't been

30:47

set. The pages

30:49

and pages in the telegraph, jaw-dropping,

30:51

the leaked WhatsApp

30:53

messages, quite surprising I do

30:56

recall reading some

30:58

of that report there and

31:02

Matt Hancock essentially

31:04

not accepting the advice that

31:07

came from Chris Whitty at

31:09

the time because

31:12

he said it would

31:13

muddy the waters.

31:15

That's Jean again. They're very

31:17

fond of saying, you know, repeating that

31:19

mantra of the science,

31:21

the science, you know, we went with the science, but

31:24

they didn't always go with the science.

31:27

When we published the revelations for Matt Hancock's

31:29

WhatsApp messages, it gave people

31:32

like Jean insight into some of the

31:34

government's decisions, which had changed

31:36

their lives forever.

31:38

But there are still big gaps in the timeline

31:42

and the Covid inquiry is committed

31:44

to filling them. But to do this,

31:46

they need to see Boris Johnson's messages.

31:49

Some breaking news to bring you coming into us here at

31:51

BBC News right now. The Cabinet office

31:54

has now lost its legal

31:56

challenge to the UK Covid

31:58

inquiry chairwoman's request.

31:59

You'll know she has been requesting

32:02

Boris Johnson, then Prime Minister, asking

32:05

for his unredacted WhatsApp

32:07

messages, notebooks and diaries.

32:10

The government have to release them

32:12

unredacted to

32:15

the chair of the Covid inquiry, so

32:17

that's a real victory for us.

32:21

So we can get to the truth and

32:25

we want to save lives

32:27

in future and we want

32:29

to obviously learn lessons. It's

32:31

a big victory for the inquiry, as

32:33

well as Jean's group. But the story

32:36

of Boris Johnson's messages hasn't

32:38

come to an end yet. Because as

32:40

we're writing this episode, the Covid

32:43

inquiry still hasn't been able to

32:45

access all the messages.

32:47

Let's go back to Jean on that Tuesday

32:49

morning in late June. It's

32:52

just gone 10am and Matt Hancock

32:54

is being sworn in. I do solemnly, sincerely

32:58

and truly, declare and affirm. Declare

33:01

and affirm.

33:02

But as the former health secretary was

33:04

on pandemic preparedness, Jean

33:06

said she became increasingly frustrated.

33:09

His attitude was, I mean,

33:11

quite glib, I would say,

33:14

in his responses. The

33:17

responsibility for

33:19

ensuring preparedness in

33:22

social care formally fell

33:24

to local authorities and

33:27

there was work required of local

33:29

authorities to put in place pandemic

33:32

preparedness plans. You know,

33:34

essentially what was being

33:37

put to him, he was kind

33:39

of defending it and saying, basically,

33:43

it

33:43

wasn't his fault. There's

33:46

quite a lot of that. Well, it was the local

33:48

authorities that were supposed

33:51

to have a plan for a pandemic.

33:53

What was the name of your department? That

33:56

I've come, I've already talked about this. It was

33:59

the Department of Health.

33:59

and social care, and yet the legal

34:02

responsibilities are with local authorities.

34:04

Oh, well, that wasn't us. That

34:07

strategy, well, I inherited

34:09

that. There was a lot of defensiveness.

34:12

It's not my fault stuff going

34:14

on with him. So again,

34:17

very disappointing. But

34:18

once his testimony was over, something

34:20

bizarre happened. He seemed to want

34:23

to come over and apologize to

34:25

us. You know, he came over and we're

34:28

not ready to hear that from him. You

34:30

know, we just turned our back on. Oh, did you? Yes.

34:33

Yeah. So yeah,

34:36

it was I was mortified. You know, he was just

34:38

like a few inches from from me

34:40

and I was, what's he doing

34:42

here? You know, yes,

34:45

it was just really inappropriate, you know, but

34:48

it wasn't, you know, it wasn't well received.

34:50

We asked him at Hancock if he wanted to

34:52

come on the podcast. He turned

34:55

us down. Instead, we received

34:57

a statement from a spokesperson which said,

34:59

open quotes, the

35:01

stolen materials published by the Telegraph

35:04

have been taken completely out of context

35:07

and many of the stories written from them are

35:09

wildly inaccurate. All

35:11

Mr. Hancock's messages had already gone

35:13

to the Covid inquiry unredacted,

35:16

which is the right place to learn lessons of

35:18

the pandemic.

35:24

For

35:24

the Lockdown Files team at the Telegraph,

35:27

once we published our initial stories from

35:29

Hancock's WhatsApp's, it was

35:31

people like Jean that made us want to continue

35:34

our investigations in this podcast, because

35:37

Jean and the hundreds of thousands

35:39

of people like her who lost loved ones, those

35:42

who suffered deserve to know how

35:44

decisions were made. And we

35:46

don't think they should have to wait years to

35:49

find out. Jean is going to

35:51

keep attending the hearings, and

35:53

as she watches the inquiry unfold,

35:54

it's her dad she will be

35:57

thinking of. He was a windrush

35:59

pioneer. So he came here

36:01

from Barbados in the 1950s. My

36:04

mum joined him here in

36:06

London and, you know, they raised a family.

36:09

And, yeah, I mean, he was

36:11

a

36:12

wonderful man, a very peaceful,

36:15

contented, hard-working

36:17

man. You know, believed in family and

36:19

he's dearly missed.

36:22

For Jean, this is about doing right

36:25

by her father. I'm passionate

36:27

about this and every

36:30

day I wake up

36:33

and, you know, I think

36:35

I remember my dad. And why

36:37

I'm doing this is to get

36:40

justice for him. And

36:43

that's

36:43

why all bereaved families, that's

36:45

why we're here in this campaign, because

36:48

we want justice for our

36:50

loved ones. And that really is the

36:53

bottom line.

37:01

I'm

37:01

Claire Newell and this is the Lockdown Files

37:03

podcast. Thank you for listening. And

37:06

if you liked the series, please leave a

37:08

five star rating and a short review

37:10

on Apple podcasts. Please

37:13

consider taking out a Telegraph subscription.

37:16

We couldn't have made this show without

37:18

our subscribers. Listeners

37:20

to this podcast can get exclusive sign

37:23

up deals at telegraph.co.uk

37:26

forward slash Lockdown Files podcast.

37:29

And if you have any information to share, please

37:32

email us on lockdown files at

37:34

telegraph.co.uk. This

37:38

episode is written by me, Janet

37:40

Easton, with help from Adelaide Poguemon

37:42

Ponte and Jack Boswell. Adelaide

37:45

Poguemon Ponte is a series producer

37:47

with Janet Easton working as co-producer.

37:51

The investigations team behind it are Catherine

37:53

Rushton, Sophie Barnes and Janet

37:55

Easton. The other reporters

37:57

who worked on the Lockdown Files are Robert McCartney.

37:59

Hailey Dixon, Tony Diver

38:02

and Jack Leather. Sound design

38:04

and mixing by Jack Valswell. The

38:07

executive producer is Louisa

38:08

Wells.