Matt Hancock points finger at NHS chief for Covid care home scandal

Matt Hancock has claimed Sir Simon Stevens, the former NHS chief executive, insisted that care home residents be discharged from hospital even though they could not be tested for Covid.

In the latest extract of his diaries, the former health secretary claims Sir Simon - now Lord Stevens - spoke to the Prime Minister about his “determination” to make it happen.

But Mr Hancock insists that the decision to let elderly people back into residential care without being tested did not lead to the vast majority of deaths in care homes.

He blamed that squarely on “unscrupulous” care home bosses who allowed infected care workers to move between homes.

The former Cabinet minister also revealed that two months before lockdown was imposed, he was warned a “very large number of people will die” from Covid.

He wrote that Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, told him on January 17 2020, that there was a “50:50 chance” the virus would escape China and cause mass deaths in Britain.

Less than a fortnight later, Mr Whitty privately warned a meeting of officials that the then untreatable virus could kill as many as 820,000 people in the UK in a “reasonable worst-case scenario”.

But he said that when he shared this information with the Cabinet soon afterwards, the reaction was “somewhat shrug shrug”.

In an interview with the Mail, Mr Hancock begged the public for “forgiveness” for breaking Covid rules during his affair - but says he stands by the decisions he made during the pandemic.

The former health secretary said he takes full responsibility for a “failure of leadership” because of his “affaire de coeur” with Gina Coladangelo - as he insisted he is “only human”.

And he admitted: “Gina’s job was to help me reach emotional depths I couldn’t reach.”

But he stood by his pandemic record, claiming there “is a good, honest explanation for every single decision”.

Mr Hancock spoke out after he was released from the Australian jungle where he had been as part of the ITV reality show I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here.

The former health secretary will face close scrutiny at the Covid public inquiry over his controversial decision to allow thousands of care home residents to be released from hospital without being tested for the virus.

In his diaries, he insisted the decision was not to blame for the thousands of deaths that followed.

And he revealed that former NHS boss Sir Simon Stevens was pushing for the move by March 13 to free up hospital beds.

He wrote: “Simon Stevens says frail elderly patients who don’t need urgent treatment need to be discharged from hospital, either to their home or to care homes. He’s ­spoken to the PM about it and is determined to make it happen.”

Mr Hancock admitted that the failure to test before discharge was an “utter nightmare”, and claimed that evidence showed the virus was “primarily” brought into care homes by infected staff.

By April 2 he said the decision had been finalised, adding: “The tragic but honest truth is we don’t have enough testing capacity to check anyway. It’s an utter nightmare, but it’s the reality.”

The former minister said that in mid-July “startling note” in his ministerial red box suggested most cases in care homes were brought in by  staff with the virus whose managers allowed them to continue working – which he later describes as “scandalous”.

A Whitehall source voiced scepticism about Mr Hancock’s suggestion that the NHS had forced him into allowing discharges into care homes without testing. The source pointed out that a High Court ruling this year found the Government and Public Health England was responsible for the decision, with judges dismissing a claim that the NHS bore a share of the blame.

“No one is disputing that hospitals were short of beds, but it was his decision to release people without testing,” the source said. “He was responsible for testing. Public Health England, which ran testing, was an executive agency of his department.”

In his diaries, Mr Hancock said that in a “classic government fail”, more than one billion items of PPE were left stuck in a warehouse for weeks because it only had one access door.

Mr Hancock was also heavily critical of Public Health England, saying the “sloth” quango had “basically given up” on trying to trace new cases by early March.

And he admitted he was shown figures suggesting the NHS was short of 150,000 beds and that there were "nowhere near" enough ventilators.

He said ministers were “stunned” when they were told there was a 50:50 chance Boris Johnson would be put on a ventilator after catching Covid, and that around half of patients on ventilators died.

Mr Hancock revealed the Cabinet was ready to nominate one of its members to take charge without a leadership election if the Prime Minister died of Covid.

Cabinet 'didn't really believe it'

Describing the events of January 28 2020, Mr Hancock wrote that he gathered Mr Whitty and 30 officials in his office to go through possible Covid scenarios.

It was, he says, “a proper ‘oh s---’ meeting” as the scale of the potential disaster began to hit home for the first time.

He writes: “In his characteristically understated way, sitting at the back peeling a tangerine, Chris Whitty quietly informed everyone that in the reasonable worst-case scenario as many as 820,000 people in the UK may die. The transmission is so high that almost everyone would catch it.

“The whole room froze. We are looking at a human catastrophe on a scale not seen here for a century.”

At a Brexit Day Cabinet meeting in Sunderland three days later, Mr Hancock shared the grim forecast with fellow ministers to little effect.

“The reaction was somewhat ‘shrug shrug’ – essentially because they didn’t really believe it,” he wrote. “I am constantly feeling that others, who aren’t focused on this every day, are weeks behind what’s going on.”

He described a meeting in February with officials in which they discussed “where in Hyde Park the burial pits (would) be” and whether the UK had enough body bags.