Sunak and Johnson Covid-19 inquiry appearances delayed ‘to avoid party conference season’

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The “box office” inquisitions that will bring Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings before the Covid-19 inquiry have been shunted back a month until November to prevent them clashing with the political conference season.

The eagerly awaited appearances of those in charge of the pandemic response will lay bare tensions and disagreements at the heart of government, including over the severity and timing of lockdowns, the rushed contracts awarded for huge amounts of personal protective equipment (PPE), school closures and policies such as Sunak’s “eat out to help out” scheme.

But such is the anticipated interest, and potential for political fallout, that it was decided to delay their appearances by several weeks in order not to disrupt or torpedo the conferences, and also so that the likes of Sunak would not have competing demands for their time.

One, which is bound to form a key part of verbal questioning, asks: “Why did you not attend any Cobra meetings in relation to Covid-19 prior to 2 March 2020, given the seriousness of the emergency?”

By this stage, with the Covid virus spreading across the world, Johnson had failed to turn up to a single meeting of the special emergency committee on the unfolding crisis.

Last summer, Prof John Edmunds of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who was a member of the Sage committee of advisers to ministers, told the Observer that the scheme had been a “spectacularly stupid idea and an obscene way to spend public money”.

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