Former health secretary Matt Hancock told the COVID-19 inquiry that some hospitals came within ‘six to seven hours’ of running out of personal protective equipment (PPE) during the pandemic.
While he admitted that the shortage was ‘awful,’ he asserted that there was never a ‘national shortage’ in England.
He told Jacqueline Carey KC, lead counsel to the inquiry: ‘We were working incredibly hard to make sure that we didn’t (run out). The stockpile that we had was not as good as it needs to be in the future. We came within small numbers of items on a regular basis during April and May 2020 – by the second wave, we were in better shape.’
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Mr Hancock, who was health secretary between 2018 to 2021, was giving evidence for the third time at the latest session of the UK COVID-19 Inquiry, which is looking at the impact the pandemic had on healthcare systems, patients and healthcare workers.
In the inquiry, Hancock accepted that they faced issues with availability of safety equipment and a delay in non-urgent treatment, but he defended the government’s decisions. He insisted that they did the best they could in the face of ‘enormous pressure.’
During the pandemic, many patients requiring cancer screening, hip replacement or other surgeries were deemed ‘non-urgent,’ and could not access the care they needed.
‘Does that mean, in a system that employs 1.4 million people in the NHS, with another around two and a half million in social care, that every decision was perfect? Of course it wasn’t. The overall point is that we did not have a collapse in the system,’ he said.
Hancock has faced criticisms for his steadfast belief in government decisions during the pandemic.
Responding to Hancock’s evidence, James Telfer, on behalf of COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, said that Hancock ‘remains more concerned about defending his legacy than helping the UK to make sure that the hellish scenes which played out in our overwhelmed hospitals during the pandemic are never, ever repeated’.
Professor Philip Banfield, council chair at the British Medical Association (BMA) said that for Hancock to say that the NHS was not overwhelmed because of his government’s decisions was ‘incredibly galling’. He said it was the ‘BMA members who worked on the frontlines during the crisis and were responsible for preventing health services from collapsing entirely’.
The COVID-19 inquiry is currently taking evidence about the impact of the pandemic on the NHS and healthcare systems across all four nations of the UK. More than 50 witnesses are expected to appear before the panel, which runs until the end of November.