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Covid inquiry: Rishi Sunak didn’t ask top scientists about Eat Out to Help Out [1]
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Date: 2023-11
The UK government’s top scientists were not consulted about Rishi Sunak’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme before it was launched, the Covid inquiry heard today.
Witnesses said chief medical officer Chris Whitty, chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance, and the membership of SAGE – a group of scientific experts who met frequently during the pandemic – were not asked for their advice on the scheme, which partially subsidised restaurant prices during August 2020 to encourage people to spend more money in the hospitality sector. Nor were they asked to conduct scientific analysis on its possible health consequences.
Academics have since concluded that Eat Out to Help Out contributed to the second wave of Covid in the autumn of 2020, while a 2021 report by the London School of Economics found that the policy had only a “limited effect” on restaurants and cafes. It also found that there had been “no knock-on benefits to other businesses from people taking advantage of the EOTHO scheme”.
Clare Lombardelli, chief economic adviser at the Treasury throughout Covid, and Stuart Glassborow, Boris Johnson’s deputy principal private secretary, both confirmed when asked by counsel to the inquiry Dermot Keating that scientists had not been asked to conduct analysis on Eat Out to Help Out.
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Keating asked Glassborow: “Was there an awareness, or did there become an awareness, at Number 10 that there was no scientific analysis of the impact this scheme would have on the virus?”
Glassborow responded: “Others in Number 10 did become aware that, as you say, there hadn’t been direct CMO [chief medical officer], CSA [chief scientific adviser], SAGE analysis for advice on this policy, so we did come to know that.”
Lombardelli said she “did not know” if Sunak or Treasury officials had considered the risk that the policy could drive up infections.
She added: “The policy was conceived in the context that you know it was safe to lift restrictions and activity could return.”
The inquiry also saw a Treasury document that set out the “intent” behind Eat Out to Help Out.
It stated that the policy was designed “to encourage levels of contact that had previously been restricted considerably”.
It was also alleged that Boris Johnson, while prime minister, had referred to then-chancellor Sunak and top officials at the Treasury as the “pro death squad”.
Vallance, then the government’s chief scientific adviser, recorded Johnson as having used the term in a diary entry on 25 January 2021. The entry related to a meeting in which a plan was set out to move the UK from so-called “tier one” restrictions to lesser, “tier three” restrictions between January and May 2021.
After the plan was established, Vallance records Johnson as saying: “We must bring in the pro-death squad from HMT [Her Majesty’s Treasury].”
The inquiry continues. openDemocracy is fundraising to pay reporters to cover every day of the public hearings. Please support us by donating here.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/covid-19-inquiry-rishi-sunak-eat-out-to-help-out-chris-whitty-patrick-vallance/
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