Transcript of Module 2 Public Hearing on 27 November 2023
(10.30 am)
Lady Hallett: Mr O’Connor.
Mr O’Connor: Good morning, my Lady.
My Lady, just before we call our first witness, my transcript screen is blank, and I imagine yours is too. We understand that there is a technical problem with the computer system which in fact is a widespread problem going far beyond the bounds of this Inquiry. It’s affecting transcription across at least London, as we gather.
The position is that the transcriber is present, she will be making a transcript of this morning’s proceedings. We won’t sadly be able to see it on our screens as long as the problem lasts, and of course steps are being taken to remedy it, and I understand that as soon as the problem has been resolved, our screens will click into action and we’ll be able to get the usual contemporaneous transcript.
Lady Hallett: Thank you, Mr O’Connor.
Mr O’Connor: My Lady, may we please call our first witness, Mr Khan.
1. Mr Sadiq Khan
MR SADIQ KHAN (sworn).
Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry
Mr O’Connor: Could you give us your full name, please.
Mr Sadiq Khan: My name is Sadiq Khan.
Counsel Inquiry: Mr Khan, you have kindly prepared a witness statement for the Inquiry, which is coming on the screen now. It’s a lengthy statement, and we’re grateful for it. The last page, we don’t need to look at, but it was signed by you on 16 June of this year, and immediately above your signature there’s a statement that you believe the facts stated in the witness statement to be true. Is that right?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Correct, yeah, thank you.
Counsel Inquiry: Mr Khan, you are currently, of course, the Mayor of London. Casting our eyes back over your career, it’s right, I think, that you were a Labour MP, in fact the MP for Tooting, between 2005 and 2016?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Yep, that’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: And within that period, you undertook various ministerial government roles between 2008 and 2010?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Between 2007 and 2010, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: 2007, thank you. Then after the 2010 election you had various shadow ministerial roles in opposition until you left Parliament in 2016, and that was the year on which you were first elected the Mayor of London, and you’re currently serving your second term in that post.
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: It’s obvious from that chronology that you were the Mayor of London throughout the period of the pandemic, 2020-2022.
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: And that is, of course, going to be the focus of our questions this morning.
Before we move to the events of the pandemic, Mr Khan, I’d like to ask you just a few questions about the role the Mayor of London, the powers, what the job entails and so on.
Of course the Mayor of London is the senior elected politician with territorial responsibility for London, and on our ready reckoner we think that there are something like 9 million people within the area for which you have responsibility. Is that right?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right. So in London there are more than 9 million who live and, during the normal working day, more than 10 million come to London, workers, tourists, visitors and so forth.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. And using another ratio, that 9 million people equates to something like 13% of the UK population?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: Let’s look at your statement, please, at paragraph 14, which is on page 3. It’s here that you give us a detailed explanation of the role or powers of the Mayor, and we’re not going to go into all of that detail, but let’s just try to summarise the position.
As you state here, the powers of the Mayor, in fact the mayoralty itself, is established, is it not, by the Greater London Authority Act of 1999?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: And Act creates and then describes the powers of this institution called the Greater London Authority, which itself is formed of the mayor and the Assembly; is that a fair summary?
Mr Sadiq Khan: It is, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: The mayor has, as we will see in a moment, some strategic powers as well as other duties, and the principal role of the Assembly is to hold the mayor to account?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: If we look at paragraph 15, and we’ll go over the page in a moment to paragraph 16, we see that the power under section 30 of the Act allows the mayor, in the words of your statement, to do anything which furthers one of its so-called “principal purposes”, which are then described as promoting economic development, wealth creation, social development or the improvement of the environment in Greater London. So high level powers, high level purposes.
Then as you go on to make the point under section 31, that the Act under that section expressly prevents the Authority, the mayor, from providing any health or social services which could be provided by a London borough council or any other public body.
Just going on to paragraph 16, you make the point that:
“The [Authority] is therefore limited to carrying out the functions expressly conferred on it …”
And that it is:
“… a strategic authority … quite different from, for example, the local authorities in London, which have responsibility for the delivery of services …”
So is it, then, Mr Khan, a fair summary that the role of the Mayor is to perform these sort of high level strategic functions rather than sort of operational decisions which are more – which are the preserve, in London, of borough councils and other bodies?
Mr Sadiq Khan: It is, but it brings with it huge convening powers, so I can work – I do work very closely with those authorities you’re talking about, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. And we’ll come to see, in terms of the sort of role of the mayor in an emergency, that’s a rather good description, it’s about convening other people more than actually performing executive functions yourself?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Exactly.
Counsel Inquiry: If we just think about the pandemic and about the NPIs that were adopted during the pandemic, we think, for example, of ordering people to stay at home, closing schools, closing hospitality venues and so on; these were not executive decisions for you to take during that time, were they?
Mr Sadiq Khan: They weren’t. There’s a separate piece of legislation, which we’ll come to, I’m sure, which is the Civil Contingencies Act which states, basically that Mayor, the GLA, is the voice of London, so in civil emergencies he or she has an important role in being that that voice, particularly when it comes to message carrying –
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Mr Sadiq Khan: – for letting us know what to do.
Counsel Inquiry: Just to be clear, I’m certainly going to come to the Civil Contingencies Act and that sort of facilitative role, and you’re absolutely right, in your statement you use that term, being the “voice of London”, but just to be clear, it’s right, isn’t it, that it wasn’t actually your role to make those –
Mr Sadiq Khan: No.
Counsel Inquiry: – executive decisions, closing schools –
Mr Sadiq Khan: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: – ordering people to stay at home and the like?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: So as you say, with that in mind, the mayor does have responsibilities in an emergency as what’s known as a Category 1 responder under the Civil Contingencies Act. That’s a point you make, if we look at paragraph 19 of your statement, on page 4.
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right, yep.
Counsel Inquiry: Again, your statement then goes on to provide us with some very useful detail about all of the different bodies that were established in order to perform your role and the role of the Authority more generally in that civil contingencies context?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: Again, I’m not going to go into all of that in as much detail as there is in the statement, but shall we try to identify the critical parts of it.
If we go on to paragraph 20, we see there you refer to the GLA being a member of something called the London Resilience Forum and, reading on in that paragraph, this London Resilience Forum you describe as being the “vehicle required by statute to facilitate the cooperation of statutory responders in London”.
So it’s the high-level body performing that sort of bringing together, facilitative role?
Mr Sadiq Khan: As (unclear).
Counsel Inquiry: You say in the next sentence that Fiona Twycross chaired the London Resilience Forum on your behalf. I think it’s right, isn’t it, that you have a sort of power or a duty either to chair that forum yourself or to nominate someone to do that; is that the position?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right. So Fiona Twycross, or Baroness Twycross, is the Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience, and I asked her in June 2016, a month after I became mayor, to chair the London Resilience Forum, because obviously they have work to do not just at times of civil emergency but at other times as well.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, so as we’ll see, some of these committees and groups that were operational during the pandemic had existed previously –
Mr Sadiq Khan: Exactly.
Counsel Inquiry: – sometimes known as “in peacetime”, others were brought into being to perform a specific role during the pandemic?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: And the London Resilience Forum was one of those that is always sitting, it’s always considering matters. And so did you consider sort of taking over the chairmanship of the London Resilience Forum during the pandemic or not?
Mr Sadiq Khan: There were meetings I did chair, but as far as the LRF is concerned, we appointed a number of co-chairs to work with Fiona, John Barradell and Eleanor, the chief executive from Southwark, performed different roles.
I should explain, there is different furniture to do with different pieces of work, so there’s a strategic co-ordination committee, there’s a London Resilience protocol – or Partnership, and so a number of different fora. I chaired some of them. For continuity, Fiona, John Barradell and others chaired others.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. So you didn’t become the chair of the London Resilience Forum but you worked very closely with it?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Yep.
Counsel Inquiry: And as you have said, there were a number of other organisations, groups running alongside it.
If we can go down to the next paragraph, please, if we look at paragraph 22, there’s a reference there to another of these groups which I think you mentioned a moment ago, the Strategic Coordination Group. Is this one of those groups that didn’t exist or at least wasn’t sort of up and running during so-called peacetime but which became operational during the pandemic?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right. So in early March, on 2 March, I chaired a Mayor’s advisory group, and we decided to do a number of things flowing from our concerns from the media about the pandemic arriving, and the SCG is one of the things that we set up.
Counsel Inquiry: So that’s the Strategic Coordination Group, and we see in paragraph 22 the description of its role is really the implementation of plans. Would that be including the implementation of plans designed by the Resilience Forum?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Exactly.
Counsel Inquiry: So it’s the sort of – it’s the operational arm of that organisation?
Mr Sadiq Khan: And in this case specifically to do with coronavirus rather than other issues that the fora has to deal with.
Counsel Inquiry: Last point on this, we can see in this paragraph that the Strategic Coordination Group measures its work alongside something called the Strategic Coordination Protocol. Again, was that a Covid-specific document or was that a protocol which had been designed before the pandemic?
Mr Sadiq Khan: So the protocol was designed before the statutory guidance in relation to the role of the GLA and pan-London governance, but it was – the SCG was set up because of coronavirus, using the protocol as a basis of who should be on this and so forth.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. So we’re getting a picture of this sort of network, hierarchy of organisations, some of which were there all along, some of which were brought into being for the sake of the pandemic. You are very much involved one way or another in this system.
If we can look at paragraph 25, please, which is over the page on page 6, this is, I think, a summary of this description. And picking it up four lines down, you say, and this is where we come back to your point about the voice, you say:
“My role is to support the operational response to an emergency in London by providing a unified statement of information and guidance – acting as a ‘voice’ for London.”
Can you, with that in mind, expand on your role in all of this, this structure of various committees and forums?
Mr Sadiq Khan: So it’s worth explaining this – explaining that. So there are certainly functional bodies that I’m in charge of, the police, the fire service, the transport system, there are number of others I’m not in charge of. This multi-agency approach means that we can work together in a collegiate way, and that includes working with the councils, we’ve got 32 councils in London, plus the City of London Corporation, a cross-party working incredibly collegiately, and I’m ostensibly the chair, working really closely with colleagues. It means we can pass on messages from the government, and I’m deemed to be, according to statutory guidance and government, generally speaking, the voice of London. But also when we reach decision, I can channel up to the government as well. So it’s a two-way process, being the voice, advocate for London but also downwards from government down to London as well.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. We’ll come to see as we look at some of the documents and some of the notes of meetings and so on, that you were very much sort of advocating, if you like lobbying government during the period of the pandemic for them to take action that you regarded as being in London’s interests. Was that also part of this role?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Yes. So a lot of the information we had was from all – open source data, me just reading the newspapers, watching the news, and colleagues doing the same, and so we decided to set up, you know, the SCG in advance of any information from the government.
I was writing to the government, we were contacting the government to ask for information, that wasn’t coming, January, February or March, at the first half of March. But notwithstanding that – that’s unusual, by the way, I can give you examples of other emergencies where it hasn’t happened, there has been co-operation. But in this case we were doing this, getting the furniture set up, the architecture set up because of the legislation, but also our experience from previous years we knew this may be useful.
Counsel Inquiry: Let me just ask you about your experience of other emergencies, and I think it’s obvious that this particular emergency was unlike anything that certainly anyone had come across before in their own career. But of course you had been involved in other emergencies, both during your time as mayor and, before that, in government. I mean, as far as your time as the mayor is concerned, the Grenfell Tower disaster took place while you were mayor, and in the same year there were also the terrorist attacks at Westminster and London Bridge.
We’re going to come to talk about COBR in the context of Covid, but it’s right, isn’t it, that you had experience of COBR in those emergencies as well?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Look, there’s nothing magic about COBR, it’s just the room where we meet, but COBR is really important, both – when I was a minister, when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister, on a couple of occasions COBRs were called and I was invited to – incredibly collegiate environment. When Theresa May was Prime Minister in 2017, a number of COBRs I was invited to to do with the terrorist attacks in London, to do with Grenfell – and it’s a really useful fora for colleagues to come together, politicians, experts in their own field, people from different parts of the country, to provide their expertise, to discuss ideas, and then the chair, the Prime Minister, makes a decision.
In fact, post the pandemic, when Liz Truss was Prime Minister, I again attended COBRs to do with Operation London Bridge. they’re incredibly useful –
Counsel Inquiry: Just pause there. That was the operation that followed the death of the Queen?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Yeah, the death of Her Late Majesty, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: You were going to say?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Because a lot of these things required co-ordination and working together, at the very least you can provide coalface experience, you can feed into the decision-makers, the Prime Minister in particular, but also you can – you’re read in earlier about why things are happening, so as the voice of London you can with confidence explain to Londoners what they should and shouldn’t be doing.
So COBR in the past, and since, has worked incredibly well as this place to discuss various responses to prepare for civil emergencies.
Counsel Inquiry: Let’s turn, then, Mr Khan, to 2020 and initially your sort of developing understanding of the pandemic.
In your witness statement, I think you say that you of course initially gained an understanding in January simply, as with the rest of us, hearing about it on the news and so on, and it was late January, 23 January, you give a description of a Question Time event that you were conducting in London, and you – actually, this was the first time you received a detailed briefing from your staff about Covid. Is that right?
Mr Sadiq Khan: It is, but I should just say, my staff’s knowledge of this was from open source data, from newspapers, from world wide web and so forth, it wasn’t from a briefing from the government. But at People’s Question Time a member of the public had asked me about Covid and my response was to that question asked by members of the public, and so my knowledge was limited but it was being discussed, clearly, because it was raised at People’s Question Time.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. So that was your own personal sort of knowledge and that was an occasion when you were briefed. The London Resilience Forum, which we’ve already mentioned, was right from the start analysing the ongoing position; is that right?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Well, that’s right. Again, the job of the London Resilience Forum is to prepare for any emergency. It could be worried about flash flooding, it could be about this, and so they, again, using open source data, had realised this may be an issue, and to their credit in February they’d started doing work to look into this virus.
Counsel Inquiry: Let’s just go, if we may, to paragraph 59 of your witness statement, which is on page 14, and this picks up the point, Mr Khan, you have been making. You say:
“We [and I take it you should have mean you, your office, the Greater London Authority] were heavily reliant on the information coming from Paul Plant and PHE at this time …”
Again, I think “at this time” you mean sort of early February, judging by the sequence of events in your witness statement:
“… as we were not receiving any information directly from Government.”
First of all, can you tell us, please, who Paul Plant was at the time?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Sure. So one of the statutory duties of the Mayor is to address health inequalities, and I have a statutory health adviser, Professor Paul Plant, at the time, who works for Public Health England. It tends to be the regional director for London PHE, as it was known then, who advises me in relation to health inequalities, and Paul was a person who I’d meet regularly to discuss a variety of issues.
Counsel Inquiry: So just going back to this sentence, Paul Plant was himself I think one of the directors of PHE?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: What’s wrong with receiving information about a developing infectious virus from PHE, which was the very body that was supposed to monitor these things?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Nothing wrong at all. In fact I was asking Paul about this virus we’d heard of, and you will see from – I think we disclosed the agenda where this was discussed – this was one of a variety of issues that we’d discuss at PHE. The point is in relation to “directly from Government”. You talked about the responsibility I have from the Civil Contingencies Act, the Greater London Act, and bearing in mind what was to transpire, you’d have expected the government speaking to me – by “government” I mean – ostensibly Downing Street, because we now know in February there were COBR meetings taking place, we knew nothing about these. And probably Paul Plant didn’t either because it’s above his pay grade. The point being is that we’re the capital city, we know what happened, had we been aware of some of the things that the government were concerned about in February or March we could have taken preventative action.
Counsel Inquiry: So, to summarise, just to make sure we’ve understood, one of PHE’s functions was to inform local authorities like you and no doubt around the country of their developing understanding of the virus. I think what you’re saying is that there would have come a time where, judging by the sort of severity of the virus, the concerns about what may happen, you would have expected, in parallel to your exchanges with PHE, to have started being briefed by central government, you say Downing Street, but that, as we will come to see, didn’t happen at that time or in fact for some time later?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Absolutely.
Counsel Inquiry: Are you saying that on the basis of any experience or on the basis of hindsight, or simply a feeling you had at the time?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Well, without wishing to breach confidences, for example, we were in close contact with the government in advance of Operation London Bridge going live, I don’t want to be indelicate, but – so there’s often conversations with the government about things in advance of them becoming – you know, us having to press “go” on issues. And so that sort of stuff does happen. It can be offline conversations, it can be direct communications with me and my office.
We were chasing the government for information. I’ve shared correspondence with you right into the government saying, “Look, we’ve heard about this thing happening, what do we do?”
Counsel Inquiry: If I can just ask you to try and slow down a little when you’re answering questions.
Mr Khan, were you chasing the government this early in sort of early February? We’ll come to see some of the exchanges a few weeks later in late February and March. Perhaps you didn’t realise how serious the position was becoming at this stage?
Mr Sadiq Khan: No, in February I wasn’t chasing the government. I wasn’t aware how serious it was.
Counsel Inquiry: So to the extent you’re criticising the government for not contacting you earlier, that’s something – an observation you’re making perhaps with hindsight; would that be fair?
Mr Sadiq Khan: The government generally does give us information about a variety of things happening. I’m disappointed the government weren’t giving us information in February about what they knew then.
Counsel Inquiry: Knowing what you know now.
Mr Sadiq Khan: Knowing what we all know now, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Yeah.
Lady Hallett: Of course it depends on what they knew then.
Mr Sadiq Khan: Well, what I’d say, my Lady, is that we were in contact at this stage, in February and March, early in March in particular, with other cities around the globe. So we’ve not got a foreign office in City Hall, but what we were doing is speaking to mayors. So I was speaking to the mayor of Milan, we were speaking to colleagues in Seoul, the mayor of Seoul, and colleagues in China, from early March, in advance of any information from the government. Now, my international relations team is, I think, three people. I’d have hoped that the Foreign Office was speaking to colleagues in China or South Korea or Italy. We were in late February, early March.
Lady Hallett: Yes. I think we’ve moved on to March. I think Mr O’Connor was at the moment dealing with early February.
Mr O’Connor: Yes, well, let’s move on, Mr Khan, because the paragraph we were looking at was, I think, located in early February, but let’s move forward a few weeks to the period around the end of February and the beginning of March.
As you say, there had been a number of COBR meetings during February, to which you hadn’t been invited. We come, then, to Friday 28 February, and a request, we know, was made on that day for you to attend a COBR meeting that was due to take place at the beginning of the next week, on 2 March, the Monday.
We can, for these purposes, just look at an email exchange.
This is INQ000118997.
We see here sort of about – the lower half of this page, an email being sent from someone in your office whose name has been redacted – to I think it’s Clare Brunton in Number 10. It says this:
“The Mayor’s Chief of Staff has asked whether Number 10 intend to invite the Mayor to the Cobra meeting regarding Coronavirus on Monday?”
That’s 2 March.
“Given its large number of airports, hospitals, and international visitors, London is of course potentially one of the most at risk places.”
I’m going to come back to that, but just to finish off with this email, we can see that in fact on the same day, on the Friday, later on in the evening, the reply comes back no:
“… spoken to those leading … the Mayor … will not be invited to the COBRA on Monday.”
But just going back to your email, please, the proposition is London is one of the places most at risk because of its airports, hospitals, international visitors and so on; that, of course, had been true since the beginning of the virus. Did sending this email on this day reflect some sort of developing understanding on your part, or not?
Mr Sadiq Khan: It’s the point I was making to Baroness Hallett, the conversation we were having, but also open source data showed this virus travels, we knew about what’s happening in northern Italy, we also knew it was half term, and we also knew that London has a number of airports that serve our city, Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, City, the Eurostar and so on and so forth, so I wouldn’t be surprised if London was the first place this virus came to. So I was cognisant of all that in real time, without the benefit of hindsight. And it just appears to me if we knew this in City Hall, and we’ve not got at our disposal the expertise Her Majesty’s government has, why didn’t they?
Counsel Inquiry: If we just move the chronology on a week, we will see that something very similar happened a week later.
If we could go, please, to INQ000119008.
If we look at the bottom of the page, there is an email dated 8 March, which was a Sunday, again from someone in your office to Clare Brunton. A request to attend COBR, which was going to happen on the next day, the next Monday. Very similar request: can the mayor come to COBR? The reason being the “potential impact on London and Londoners”. This time, if we – well, we can see that the same response is received, if we can go up to the top of that page, please, there’s a response, in fact, on the Monday morning, at 9.50: no the Mayor is not required but the PM has asked for a separate meeting to take place with a Cabinet Minister.”
Let’s just look, if we may, at another set of emails, this time internal at Number 10, to show how that decision to refute – not to invite you on that occasion was reached.
So if we can look at INQ000214135, please.
At the bottom of that page we see the same email from your member of staff, and then if we look, going up the page, first of all Clare Brunton says to – emails saying she assumes “the answer is no again?” Then we see the email from Eddie Lister, who was, was he not, one of the Prime Minister’s chiefs of staff or his chief of staff –
Mr Sadiq Khan: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – we’ve heard oral evidence from him – saying that no, he does think there needs to be a meeting of mayors, perhaps with Matt Hancock.
Then another email from Clare Brunton saying that it had been discussed at the 8.15 meeting and that the general view was that there was in fact an argument for you to be at the meeting.
Then at the very top, the sort of final response from Eddie Lister:
“You can’t have him without Street, Burnham et al …”
Reference to the mayors of Birmingham and Manchester.
“… or is London more important than Manchester.”
We heard from Lord Lister that that reflected his view. In other words, one either invited all the metro mayors, to use that term, or none of them. And that is why, as we saw in the previous document, you were not invited.
What’s your reaction to that analysis and that reasoning behind you not being invited to COBR at that stage?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Well, firstly, I think it may well have been sensible to invite Andy Street, Andy Burnham and other metro mayors to COBR meetings rather than bilaterals, but secondly they knew then, I knew subsequently, that London was different. I knew subsequently London was different because I was subsequently told that the pandemic was having an impact on London ahead of the rest of the country. The government were aware the challenges in ICU, the challenges in our hospital, and the government were aware about community transmission in London. So there is an argument for London to be treated differently at this particular time.
But secondly actually we know, and it was the case then and it was the case in 2009, there is an ability for COBR to have some people joining virtually anyway. So there’s no reason at all why others couldn’t join as well.
Counsel Inquiry: I wanted to pursue that point with you. We’ve already seen that the sort of headline reason, the justification for the request for you to be at the COBR was because London was special in this context, and we’ll come back to that. But the other point you made was: well, why not invite the metro mayors? I mean, we know that the devolved administrations were being invited to COBR at that stage.
Leaving aside what you thought was, and as it turned out was in fact the sort of advanced position of London, imagine it was just a national emergency with no particular region ahead of the other, in that context do you think there’s an argument for inviting a series of metro mayors to a meeting like this?
Mr Sadiq Khan: It depends on the circumstances. So, for example, I had no objection when there was a – you know, a terrorist attack in an arena in Manchester for the metro mayor being present for those COBRs, because obviously it affects Manchester. But we know that London’s population, as you’ve said before, is more than 9 million. It’s more than Scotland and Wales put together. For example, did those COBR know most people in London travel by bus or tube? More than 5 million journeys by bus, more than 4 million by tube. So the transmission is going to happen very, very quickly of this virus. How many of those around COBR knew issues around diversity, comorbidity, intergenerational households, overcrowded accommodation? How many people around COBR knew, for example, in London there are more people who work on zero hours contract, work in the gig economy, you know, work in frontline jobs where they can catch this virus.
So my point being, it’s not – it’s horses for courses. In this particular case I can see no explanation at all why, you know, the GLA, the Mayor of London, we weren’t around that table. I think lives could have been saved if we were earlier.
Counsel Inquiry: That was Monday 9 March, that COBR meeting, the second COBR meeting to which you were not invited took place. I want to move on and now ask you about a meeting that took place a couple of days later, on Wednesday 11 March. That was a day on which you and some of your staff met with Chris Whitty.
Shall we look first of all at a record of that meeting, it’s up on screen now. Before I ask you about the detail of this document, Mr Khan, there are a few documents like this amongst your – the exhibits to your statement. They are transcripts. Most of them, like this one, say that they’re a transcript of David Bellamy. He was your chief of staff, was he not?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Correct. He still is, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: So can we take it that documents like this are typed-up versions of contemporaneous written notes that he took at meetings like this?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Correct, yeah. His handwritten notes are awful to read, so I think the typed version means you can read then what he’s written, but I think the handwritten notes have been disclosed as well.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. Yes, just so everyone knows that’s what these documents are.
I just want to draw your attention to a couple of entries on this document, the notes of the meeting that you had with Chris Whitty on that Wednesday 11 March.
First of all, only two lines down, we see an entry:
“CMO …”
That’s Chris Whitty, saying this is “going to be a global pandemic”. And then some detail.
Did Chris Whitty give you detail there that you hadn’t previously understood?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Well, firstly, it’s just worth explaining, this meeting was at my request. I’d contacted his office and said, “Look, we know about this pandemic I’d like to meet with you to discuss this”. Second, just to clarify, Mr O’Connor, 2 March was the first time I was aware of COBR, but there had been many COBRs in February, as you’re well aware, and in January, and so this was me asking to meet Chris Whitty and, although I’d read the phrase “global pandemic”, Chris Whitty telling me there’s going to be a global pandemic, you know, was shocking to hear from him, but it’s a first time I’d met with him since we knew about this virus and he was telling me this is going to be a global pandemic.
Lady Hallett: Mr Khan, could you go slower, there is a stenographer –
Mr Sadiq Khan: I do apologise.
Lady Hallett: No, it’s easily done, I understand.
Mr O’Connor: Let’s just scroll down a little, please.
Yes.
Can you see the paragraph there that says:
“Think actual … number 5-10k; London lead as transport hub and density; no more than 2-3 weeks.”
What was the information that Chris Whitty was giving you there?
Mr Sadiq Khan: So what Mr Whitty, Professor Whitty, was telling us was the numbers of people in London he thought had the virus, the reasons why we were, if you like, ahead of the others, why it was worse in London: because we are a transport hub, airports, Eurostar, et cetera, and our density, you know, the disease can be passed far quicker because we’re a dense city.
I think the reference to no more than two to three weeks is in relation to before things get really bad, because if you see later on he mentions priorities next week, two to three weeks. He was worried, you know, about the virus, about its impact on London. That’s how I received it.
Counsel Inquiry: And just picking up on the point about London, the position in London being ahead of the rest of the country, if we could just go down a few more lines, please. Yes.
If you can see just a little bit above the bottom of the screen there, there’s an entry “Get timing right for London; too early for others but regional approach is too confusing”. That, again, seems to be consistent with the idea that London is ahead of the rest of the country and the measures that were being planned were going to be designed to address the position in London even if it meant they might be a bit early for the rest of the country; is that right?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Without a doubt. Look, it’s difficult to articulate the impact this meeting had on me in relation to hearing this from the CMO. It was quite clear it was coming our way, this virus, and we’d be affected badly, but also the response from him was trying to explain to me the reasons why the other parts of the country weren’t yet affected, because us being the transport hub and so forth, it made sense when he explained it the way he did.
Counsel Inquiry: And in summary, what Professor Whitty was telling you at this meeting was confirming, obviously, also adding much more detail, the consideration, the suspicion that you had had before, which is that London, because of its status as a transport hub and proximity of so many people living together, would be ahead of the rest of the country in the development of the virus?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Absolutely. I think at this stage, Mr O’Connor, we may have had an example where a school had pupils who had the virus and that school may have closed down because of a skiing holiday in Italy. So that was also at the fore of my mind, I was aware that the virus was in London because of the school closure. But it’s clear from what Chris Whitty was saying, the impact on London was going to be huge.
An example of how I received it was that week I decided to cancel the Saint Patrick’s Day event on the Sunday just on the basis of what Chris Whitty had told me about the impact of the virus. This was in advance of me going to the first COBR. I think Saint Patrick’s Day was going to take place, the event in Trafalgar Square, that Sunday.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. Let’s pick up the chronology again, then. So that was the Wednesday 11 March. At the end of that – no, sorry, the next day, in fact, on Thursday 12 March, there was another COBR meeting. We can look briefly at another of these email exchanges.
INQ000118843, please.
Quite a familiar exchange by now, at the top half of the page, an email on that day, early – at lunchtime on 12 March, to Clare Brunton asking if you could attend. Presumably the meeting was in the afternoon. Simply repeating the request, really, and saying:
“… we think it important that he is there representing London.”
And the answer comes back:
“… checked with the team and I’m afraid not.”
You’ve already described your frustration at not having been at the earlier meetings, presumably coming the day after your meeting with Professor Whitty. Perhaps you were even more frustrated at that?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Can I just go back to a point you’ve mentioned about the powers or lack of in relation to NPIs. So the only powers I had was to do things like enhanced cleaning on the Underground, which I did that week cancelling St Patrick’s Day on the Sunday, so that’s me not being properly briefed by everybody but just by the CMO. So, yeah, to say I was frustrated is a fair understatement.
Counsel Inquiry: We then go into the weekend. You’ve mentioned you cancelled the St Patrick’s Day event. There was yet another COBR meeting on Monday 16th. Of course, the Inquiry has heard a lot of evidence about meetings and so on that took place at Downing Street and the Cabinet Office on the Friday, the 13th, and over that weekend, in fact. But then there was another COBR meeting on Monday 16 March, and on this occasion you were invited to attend.
Were you given an explanation at that point as to why you were being invited then but hadn’t been invited previously?
Mr Sadiq Khan: No.
Counsel Inquiry: Let’s look, if we may, back at your witness statement where you provide an account of that meeting on Monday 16th. It’s paragraphs 82 and 83 on page 19 of your statement.
We can see then at paragraph 82 you refer to attending that meeting on the Monday the 16th. You refer to it being stated at the meeting that:
“… London was ‘a few weeks’ ahead of the rest of the country.”
Then in the paragraph below, you say that this was a moment you’ll never forget.
Can you expand on all of that for us, please.
Mr Sadiq Khan: I mean, I was told for the first time by the Prime Minister and others how bad things were. I’d been briefed by the CMO the week earlier, but not with the colour that the current meeting presented the challenges in London. When I told – which is, the concentrations of the cases in ICUs in London are really serious. The Prime Minister is using words like “This is the biggest challenge we’re going to face since the Second World War. Draconian measures are going to be needed”. And this is not in any way, you know, sort of delusions of grandeur, but I had been kept in the dark as the elected mayor of London, but also realising there are things we could have done in relation to some of these issues, some we did – St Patrick’s Day, enhanced cleaning on the Underground – others we didn’t do. And I was quite clear – not in any way to sound panic driven, but I was alarmed by what I was being told in relation to where we were and where we may go to. And I will never forget that sort of feeling of lack of power, lack of influence, not knowing what’s happening in our city.
Counsel Inquiry: Now –
Lady Hallett: Sorry, could I just ask what you would have done – I mean, you’d been told on 11 March by the CMO that there was going to be a global pandemic, and it was coming to London, and the impact was going to be huge, but you said you had limited powers. Had you – supposing that message had come from government as opposed to Chris Whitty, who obviously is a government employee, what would you have done differently in those five days?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Some of the things that happened subsequently. So it’s me that lobbied the Prime Minister to go to lockdown. It was me that lobbied the Prime Minister in relation to the inability to keep social distancing on public transport, so people shouldn’t be using public transport unless they had to.
Lady Hallett: So we’re talking about lobbying; we’re not talking about specific actions because your powers are limited.
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s the joy of COBR, my Lady, that you can put your views forward to people with the power, and they can take power. So because COBR is chaired by the Prime Minister, he can act, if you like, as a referee between different points of view between the Cabinet, but take some more representations from somebody at the coalface of London and can respond.
So I’ll give you an example, in relation to some of the lobbying in the absence of power to the Prime Minister that led to action. The lockdown was –
Lady Hallett: Well, I think Mr O’Connor is going to come to that. Sorry, my question may have pre-empted.
Mr Sadiq Khan: The point I was making, my Lady, was had I been at any of the COBRs, I could have pointed out some of the reasons why community transmission was going to accelerate in London. Because I wasn’t present there, those views weren’t aired and weren’t responded to.
Lady Hallett: Thank you.
Mr O’Connor: As my Lady says, Mr Khan, let’s come then to the next period. We know there was a week in fact between that COBR meeting we were just discussing on Monday 16th and the following Monday when the national lockdown was announced by the Prime Minister.
You had a number of exchanges with the Prime Minister during that week. And first of all, I want to ask you about a meeting that took place on the Thursday of that week, Thursday 19th, which you give us some detail about in your witness statement.
If we could go on, please, to paragraph 88 of your witness statement. You say here that you requested a meeting with the Prime Minister, and it would appear that request was granted, and it was on that day, Thursday 19th, that you and your chief of staff David Bellamy, actually went in person to Downing Street and had a meeting with the Prime Minister.
Moving on in your statement, at paragraph 89, please, you describe – if we can go to the rest of the paragraph, please, over the page – drawing on your knowledge of what was happening in other countries, you say:
“Many other countries had introduced some form of lockdown by this point …”
You felt strongly that, in summary, hospitality venues should be closed, and this is something that you said to the Prime Minister at that point; is that right?
Mr Sadiq Khan: It is. But can I explain? We had a massive advantage as a country, which was that the pandemic was happening elsewhere weeks in advance of us, so we could see what was working elsewhere and see what wasn’t working, and it seemed to me that advantage wasn’t being used.
And so we knew from the proactive work we’d done from City Hall what was happening elsewhere. I’d spoken to the leaders of other cities around the world to see what actions they had taken, and we were an outlier.
Counsel Inquiry: The Inquiry has heard that the sort of Number 10 machine, if you like – politicians, civil servants, scientists – had spent much of the weekend before this Thursday locked in meetings, trying to understand the data, discussing which NPIs should be imposed. A series of NPIs had been imposed, had they not, a day or two before this Thursday? And certainly the evidence we’ve heard is that what came to be described as lockdown had been considered and was under consideration during this period.
Is that something you understood at the meeting, or did you think you were raising something that the Prime Minister hadn’t already heard?
Mr Sadiq Khan: No, it was clear that some of these things were – had been surfaced, but the Prime Minister wasn’t persuaded. So I’ll give you an example in relation to my surprise.
The Prime Minister wasn’t aware that in other parts of the world they had lockdowns in place and fines could be issued if you breached the lockdown. I was surprised he wasn’t aware of that in relation to what’s happening elsewhere.
Counsel Inquiry: He said that, did he?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Yeah, because my chief of staff gave the example of Milan in relation to the imposition of fines. The Prime Minister wasn’t aware, for example, in France there were some tensions because Parisians were going to other parts of the country, and so it was important to keep people confined to where they were. That was the conversation we were having. And I was surprised at the lack of awareness of some of these things.
Counsel Inquiry: You go on in your statement, Mr Khan, to describe the exchanges at this meeting, and in summary, tell me if I’ve got this right, you and Mr Johnson agreed that there would be a press conference that day, later on, on the Thursday, where you would both appear together and ask hospitality venues to close. And subsequently, you got a message to say that that wasn’t – I mean – sorry, I’ve leapt ahead.
You then left Downing Street to go back to City Hall to prepare for the press conference, but you then got a message to say that there had been second thoughts and that the press conference wasn’t going to go ahead after all. Is that a – I’m going to come – take you to that particular part of your witness statement in a moment, but is that a summary of what was discussed at the meeting?
Mr Sadiq Khan: It is, but it’s just worth explaining. It was quite clear during the meeting that the Prime Minister was hesitant to bring in measures. I made the point to him: “Look, you’re a libertarian. I’m somebody who’s passionate about human rights. If we’re both saying to London we’ve got to have restrictions, that is really powerful. You’re Conservative, I’m Labour, that’s a really powerful thing for both of us to be addressing London.” And that point landed with Dom Cummings and with the Prime Minister, I thought. And he said, “You’re right. Let’s have a press conference together”. And so I left Downing Street to return to City Hall because it was going to be some hours left, the press conference, so I could get my words together and so forth.
Counsel Inquiry: Let’s just look, if we may, at paragraph 92 and towards the end of that paragraph, because it’s here that you describe, after you had gone back to City Hall, receiving a call from Dominic Cummings to say that the decision had been made not to go ahead with the press conference.
His explanation for that, partly, was that the matter would be discussed further at COBR the next day, but also this: he was concerned about the impact on the financial markets and thought an announcement on the Friday, as the markets were about to close for the weekend, would be better.
Now, one of the broad themes the Inquiry is addressing is this question of balancing economic considerations against the health benefits of imposing NPIs. That would seem to be a perfectly logical way of balancing those competing considerations, on one view, Mr Khan.
Mr Sadiq Khan: In isolation, yes, but what it does, it avoids the link between lives and livelihoods. The link between the health of individuals and the health of the economy. We know and they knew at the time that community transmission – community transmission means people catch this virus very, very quickly, which inhibits their ability to be good workers, productive workers, and so forth. So I couldn’t disagree with him saying the impact on the markets and so forth. My frustration: a further 24 hours of this virus spreading, what impact would that have on the financial markets, on our productivity and so forth?
Counsel Inquiry: It’s an example of, in this case, the Prime Minister trying to balance the health impacts against the economic impacts of taking these decisions.
Mr Sadiq Khan: We didn’t get a chance to discuss it.
Counsel Inquiry: Well, you’re right. He’d already taken that decision and told you of his decision.
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: We see there a reference to the COBR for the next day. That was Friday 20 March. You attended that COBR meeting as well, did you not?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Yes, I did. Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: And it was this COBR meeting, if we look at paragraph 94 of your statement, please, about four lines down you say:
“The PM was not at this COBR meeting, which I found extraordinary given the circumstances.”
Were you – did you ask, were you told, why the Prime Minister was not at that COBR meeting?
Mr Sadiq Khan: I can’t – I can’t remember. It must have been raised but I can’t remember the explanation why he wasn’t there.
Counsel Inquiry: Do you remember having any reaction to whatever explanation you were given?
Mr Sadiq Khan: It surprised me, because one of the huge advantages of the Prime Minister chairing COBR is often, not unreasonably, there will be different points of view, and the Prime Minister, as the boss, can arbitrate on the different points of view. To paraphrase you, he can balance those points of view. And with respect to Michael Gove as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, if there was a difference, it’s quite difficult for him to arbitrate and decide, although, to give Michael Gove credit, he did.
Counsel Inquiry: In any event, you can’t – we may well hear from Mr Johnson, but you can’t remember why it was that –
Mr Sadiq Khan: No.
Counsel Inquiry: – he wasn’t at that meeting.
Later on in this paragraph, you describe a sort of shifting. Initially, a – the meeting being in favour of pushing off the closure of hospitality venues into the weekend but a counterargument being made that it should be that day, at the end of the day, on that Friday.
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: And in the end, that other argument, the Friday argument, prevailing.
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right. And this was to Michael Gove’s credit. He decided to agree with those of us lobbying for Friday night rather than Saturday.
Counsel Inquiry: There’s one more sequence of exchanges between you and the Prime Minister that I want to ask you about in this part of the chronology, and that is a letter you wrote and then a call you had with him on Sunday 22 March.
Let’s look, please, at the letter first.
So that is INQ000118939.
So let’s remind ourselves. As I say, Mr Khan, this was the Sunday just before the lockdown was announced, in fact, the next day.
One gets the impression from your statement you were at home on that day, but you wrote this letter –
Mr Sadiq Khan: Sure.
Counsel Inquiry: – from home.
Mr Sadiq Khan: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: And sent it to him by email, one assumes?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: If we can go down to about the fourth paragraph, please. Yes, sorry, one more paragraph, thank you.
So we can see in the paragraph that starts “I am hearing time and again” your concerns about the measures that had been imposed to date. And at the end of that paragraph, you refer to the fact that – we’ve talked about at some length – that London being a few weeks ahead of the rest of the country and so on.
And it’s in the next paragraph that you make your sort of request or you advocate a particular step for the – that you think the Prime Minister ought to take. You say:
“There needs to be an immediate strengthening of the public health messaging to London. Advice is being seen as something that can be ignored. I do not use the phrase lockdown lightly, but I believe Londoners must be told to stay home unless they are an essentially worker, are buying food, or collecting medication from pharmacists. Alongside this, there must be clear reassurances …”
And so on.
So you are at that point advocating for what became known as a mandatory lockdown.
If we could just go over the page, please, one more paragraph, you say this, at the end of the letter:
“… alternatively, if you insist on continuing with the same course [by inference that means not adopting a mandatory lockdown], I will be left with no choice but to speak directly to Londoners with a tougher message if it means thousands of people’s lives could be saved.”
What do you mean by you are – you’re not threatening him, but you are indicating that if he doesn’t do what you’re to asking him, you will take a different course. What exactly were you proposing there?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Well, in a crisis, it’s really important there’s one message being given to citizens, otherwise that can lead to confusion. My frustration at the lack of clarity from the government’s messaging, “Don’t use public transport but go to work”, “These shops are closed down but you can go out and about and keep town centres busy”, and so forth, was leading to confusion. And the point I was trying to get across is, if it’s the case – and I knew this from the conversation I had with him and Dom Cummings on the Thursday – if it’s the case you yourself for a variety of reasons don’t want to have a stricter message, I will say to Londoners, you know, do certain things to save your lives, which will save livelihoods.
Counsel Inquiry: So as we’ve explored, it wouldn’t have been open to you to order a mandatory lockdown yourself, what you’re describing there is, as it were, departing from the government’s messaging. You would be saying something different to the government, you would be encouraging Londoners to do more, by way of staying at home and so on, than the national government was telling them?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Yeah, I have very limited statutory powers in relation to the NPIs, for the reasons you’ve said. It’s about the messaging.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. So that was a letter that was sent by email to the Prime Minister on that Sunday, and it’s right, isn’t it, that you spoke to the Prime Minister on the telephone later that day?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: If we could have on screen, please, INQ000118944.
Now, this is a similar transcript, are you able to help us with who wrote this? It doesn’t say that it was Mr Bellamy that wrote it.
Mr Sadiq Khan: No, this was written by, I think, Ali Picton, who is the director of operations in my office.
Counsel Inquiry: Was he listening in to the call –
Mr Sadiq Khan: She was, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Sorry, she.
Mr Sadiq Khan: I mean, when it goes through a switch you can have more than two people on a call. Number 10 Downing Street has a switch and they connect more than two people on a call.
Counsel Inquiry: So this was a note taken by your official of the call between you and Mr Johnson –
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: – on that day.
We can see then there was a discussion which, as it were, continued the debate from your letter, because we can see in the first line Mr Johnson saying he had seen that letter. One of the things that’s notable about this conversation is Mr Johnson repeatedly stresses his concern about the economic costs of the lockdown, Mr Khan.
If we scroll down a little we see the entry saying – starting:
“BJ: Will talk to team overnight.”
We can see at the end of that entry he is saying:
“But this comes at great economic cost.”
Just scroll down a little further, please.
So the entry starting “It’s better if we can co-ordinate as much as possible”. Again, he goes on to say:
“There is a trade off, we can’t just completely screw up the economy.”
Then still further, down to the next page, please, that first entry at the top of the next page.
Again Mr Johnson is saying:
“We don’t want to cripple the economy.”
I’ll ask you about that in a minute, but more generally, was it your understanding at this stage, on the Sunday, that Mr Johnson still hadn’t decided in his own mind whether to take that step of imposing a mandatory lockdown?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: Then, help us, these repeated references to the economy –
Mr Sadiq Khan: Sure.
Counsel Inquiry: – does that give us a clue as to what Mr Johnson was thinking on that day?
Mr Sadiq Khan: I mean, you’ll see from the contemporaneous records of our meetings that I’d raised the issue of the economy as well. The first time I met with him I raised the issue of my concern about those on a zero hours contract, those in the gig economy. I’d in fact after the first COBR written to the Prime Minister and suggested a sub-COBR dealing with the economy. I was also cognisant of the impact on the economy.
I was also aware by this stage a lot of Londoners had already lost their lives. I think 148 Londoners had lost their lives by this Sunday. And the point I was trying to get across to the Prime Minister was the link, as I’ve said, between lives and livelihoods. And actually had we got a grip of the virus earlier, had an earlier lockdown, in my view, it would have been shorter and have had less of an impact on the economy.
Counsel Inquiry: We’ll come back to this point in the context of the debates later in the year, Mr Khan, but tell us what your understanding was of how the discussion was left at the end of this call. Had Mr Johnson made his mind up, or was he saying that he would reflect further and let you know?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Oh, no, it’s quite clear from – you’ll see the last four interactions that he was considering what – he was considering what I’d said, but he hadn’t been persuaded to the points I was making. But you will see it ends by saying let’s speak again tomorrow.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. Did you in fact speak again the next morning? We know that the next day, at the end of the day, Mr Johnson made his announcement. But did you, the two of you, speak again, or can you not remember?
Mr Sadiq Khan: I suspect by the next morning we’d have known there was a COBR taking place that day, which may be the reason why we didn’t speak.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. In any event, it’s right, isn’t it, that it was the next day, after the COBR, that the announcement was made that the mandatory lockdown was to come into force?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: Let me move on. I’ve got a couple of shortish series of questions to ask you perhaps before we have a break.
Following the imposition of the lockdown, there were concerns, were there not, about the availability and the way in which – the availability of PPE within London and the way in which it was being passed out, allocated to the workers who needed it.
If we look at paragraph 292 of your statement, you address this issue there. It’s on page 64.
Now, as you observed, Mr Khan, this issue will be the subject of another module within the Inquiry, so I’m not going to take you into great detail about PPE, but, as we can see, this was a matter that concerned you in the early months of the first lockdown. Perhaps you can just explain in general terms what you understood to be the problem?
Mr Sadiq Khan: So if I can explain, one of the things I was doing was chairing a London leaders meeting. That was the leaders of councils, who are responsible for a lot of social care. And they were telling me the challenges they had in getting personal protective equipment to their social care workers who were in the frontline looking after people in social care. There was a separate conversation from those in the police service, those in transport, those elsewhere, about what kit they should have, and there was a separate lobbying taking place from those in the healthcare profession about a lack of proper PPE for their members as well.
Your point earlier on about the role of the Mayor, what it means is you get lots of different people coming to me raising concerns, from health workers to council leaders responsible for social care, to those bodies that I’m responsible for, and others. And I was articulating to the Secretary of State the concerns that were being raised to me and asking for a proper response.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
One of the themes that appeared to have been raised and which you referred to there, was a logistical issue, so not so much whether the PPE was available but how it was passed out to those who needed it, and we can see this referred to in fact not in the letter you refer to in that paragraph, but in a slightly later one.
If we can go to, please, INQ000118830.
So this is a letter of 13 April, Mr Khan, though you refer in it to two earlier letters, of 31 March and 8 April.
It’s the first paragraph underneath the heading “PPE”, where you refer to what you describe, it’s a phrase that comes up twice in this paragraph, “inconsistent supply” of PPE. Was that an issue that you were concerned about, it would seem, both in March and as late as 13 April?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Absolutely. Just to be clear, I was hearing stories about care workers, you know, doing DIY PPE because there was no PPE in some of these care homes.
Counsel Inquiry: So is this then an example of you raising these problems that you had heard through that sort of web of –
Mr Sadiq Khan: Absolutely.
Counsel Inquiry: – contacts that you had?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Absolutely.
Counsel Inquiry: Without going into detail, were these problems resolved in your experience or did they carry on?
Mr Sadiq Khan: They carried on for some time. At some stage later on we offered the London Fire Brigade to take responsibility for logistics, so they would be sent a lot of the PPE, be told where it needs to go and the LFB would organise, in Croydon, from where the PPE should go. But that happened some time later though.
Counsel Inquiry: One more topic, it’s related, which is the question of face coverings. Can we look, please, at paragraph 170 of your statement on page 38.
Just to be clear, Mr Khan, in broad terms, when we speak of PPE, we are talking about specialist kit provided to emergency services, healthcare staff and so on. In contrast, this debate that you engage with about face coverings was really focused on people, ordinary people not necessarily at all associated with the emergency services or health staff, whether they should wear, as we will see, in some – many cases, home-made or simple fabric face coverings.
Mr Sadiq Khan: Your question raises a really important point, which is there was an understandable concern about finite PPE. It was being rationed as a consequence. So I deliberately didn’t use the word “face mask” where I could avoid it, because that would conflate a finite rationed resource with something that’s available infinite, which is face coverings which you can make at home and all the rest of it, which in itself, we’ll come to later on I hope, can be really helpful in stopping the virus spreading.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, so there is that distinction and we’re on the right ground. As you say, this is something that you advocated for over some time, was it not, during the pan?
Mr Sadiq Khan: I think the first time I wrote to the government about this was in early April.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, I’m going to take you to that letter in just a moment.
Just the starting point, Mr Khan, you say here at paragraph 170 that:
“In the very early stages of the pandemic, particularly before the first national lockdown … the effectiveness of wearing a face covering as a general public health measure was unclear.”
I just want to ask you whether it was at that stage particularly unclear, because in fact in this paragraph and, in fact, the paragraph that follows, you then recite a series of views or judgements made by individual scientists, scientific bodies, the World Health Organisation, who were all in fact unanimous in the early stages that face masks were not going to be a helpful tool – face coverings were not going to be helpful or useful in the context of this pandemic. That’s right, isn’t it?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s very fair. And this is the point about, as the scientific knowledge evolves, as we discover more, because we’re – because, thankfully, we got the various after others, we can see what’s working elsewhere and then learn from it. And this is a really good example of initially the view being face coverings don’t really make much of a difference, very soon though, across the globe and including in our own very SAGE on 21 April, the evidence of the conclusions changed, yet the decisions taken by our government didn’t.
Counsel Inquiry: Surrounding ourselves on this very early stage, as you recite, there was really, certainly within the UK scientific community, a consensus that they weren’t helpful.
Mr Sadiq Khan: Up until April 20th, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Including – we haven’t touched on STAC, that stands for the London Science and Technical Advice Cell; in summary, is this right, it was your own London sort of version of SAGE?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s a very fair summarily.
Counsel Inquiry: So you in fact asked them about face coverings. having seen what SAGE had said. And they agreed, we can see here, they provided a briefing note suggesting that the disadvantages would outweigh the benefits?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s fair.
Counsel Inquiry: So that at least was the context for the letter that you’ve just mentioned. And let’s look at that, please.
It’s INQ000118829.
I think you said this was the first letter you wrote on this issue, Mr Khan?
Mr Sadiq Khan: I should explain, the Prime Minister was unwell in hospital so Dominic had taken over, and so that’s why I was writing to Dominic Raab rather than the Prime Minister.
Counsel Inquiry: Indeed. So we will – this is something we’ve already heard evidence about, that by 8 April Dominic Raab was taking the place of the Prime Minister because of his illness.
Now, in the first line of this letter you refer there to the use of non-medical face coverings. and does this pick up on the point you’ve already made, which is that you were wanting to distinguish what we have been describing as face coverings from the sort of PPE-style specialist equipment?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Spot on. The other key word in that first line is “reviews”. To your point, I appreciate the initial view may have been not a sensible use but I’m saying to the government: review that in light of – what I go on to say.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. In fact just to finish off this point, if we could briefly look at the end of this letter on the next page, you – yes, so the paragraph starting “I recognise”, you are there explicitly recognising that there is an issue about reserving specialist equipment for those in the NHS and other services who need it and that you are expressly not talking about competing with them –
Mr Sadiq Khan: Exactly, exactly.
Counsel Inquiry: – for these face coverings.
But then if we can just go back to the first page, please, most of this letter is taken up with you referring to other countries where the practice is different and countries where, in one way or another, face coverings among the general population have been encouraged, some in different settings than others?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right. Our own research had shown, from the Centers for Disease Control in the USA, to the chief medical officer in Canada, to these other mayors from cities we were speaking to, that they were using face coverings to – if you’ve got the virus, it could be asymptomatic, it prevents the droplets spreading to somebody else who may catch it. And also in April read articles in the BMJ and Lancet which were also talking about how useful face coverings can be.
Counsel Inquiry: So if we just scroll down, we can see you refer to the Austrian government, then there are a series of examples taken from the United States, a little bit further down, I think for the last one, Canada?
Lady Hallett: Have I misrecorded, I thought you said that your expert advisory body said on 6 April that the disadvantages outweighed the benefits?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right. So there’s two things happening: one is the evidence given by Professor Paul Plant to the London health assembly; two is the work of STAC, which is the London – call it SAGE for shorthand. In addition you had all this stuff taking place across the globe, so I’m asking the government to review – because they’ve got the advantage of SAGE – STAC is not quite SAGE – so I’m asking the government to review the advice from SAGE based upon all these things that I point to.
Lady Hallett: So is the answer: did I misrecall? I thought you had said the 6 April advice you received from your expert body was the disadvantages –
Mr Sadiq Khan: Outweighed, correct.
Lady Hallett: Have I got it right or wrong?
Mr Sadiq Khan: You’ve got it correct.
Lady Hallett: Right. So had anything changed between 6 April and you’re writing this letter of 8 April, so you had had expert advice, disadvantages outweigh advantages, and then on 8 April you reference what’s happening abroad. Had anything changed in those two days?
Mr Sadiq Khan: The evidence from abroad, which I had managed to get together from our own desktop research, which I’m not sure – I’m not sure STAC had. So I’m saying, “Look, I’ve done this research, can you review your expert advice based upon this research that I’ve gathered?”
Lady Hallett: Thank you.
Mr O’Connor: I’m close to the time. Just a couple of final points to finish off this point, Mr Khan, if I may.
Your witness statement addressing this issue then takes us through the following months where, bit by bit, as you’ve, said the scientific advice changed and, stage by stage, the UK Government changed its advice and then its mandatory – it imposed various mandatory conditions about where face coverings had to be worn, different places, transport networks, and so on.
Just with that in mind, I’d like to take you to look at paragraphs 184 and 185 of your witness statement. On page 41.
184 refers to a letter from Matt Hancock, in fact replying – not replying to the letter we’ve just looked at but one which had been written a few days later, but stating that government expert groups had considered that face mask – rather, had considered the use of face masks, decided there was not sufficient evidence to recommend their use but that they are “currently re-reviewing” the position in the light of the “latest available evidence”.
Then you say this:
“I was disappointed by this response, which I felt gave short shrift to the legitimate concerns I had repeatedly raised on face coverings. Notwithstanding the science” –
Lady Hallett: I think this is going too political, the second part.
Mr O’Connor: Well, can I just ask you a general question, Mr Khan.
We’ve heard a lot in this Inquiry about following the science. Is it fair to say that on this issue of face coverings. the UK government did in fact follow the science, in the sense of repeatedly asking expert bodies to review the position and, when the scientific understanding changed, more or less, changing the guidance, in some cases making mandatory requirements? So in that context, at a high level, were they not, in fact, on one view, acting appropriately?
Mr Sadiq Khan: No, because the SAGE group of experts who met – who concluded face coverings would make a difference concluded that on April 21st. The use of face coverings only on public transport became mandatory some months later, in June. The use of face coverings in shops only became mandatory in late July. The use of face coverings in museums, galleries and so forth only became mandatory in August. Had the government been following this scientific evidence after that SAGE meeting on April 21st, they would have advised people, in fact made it mandatory, to wear face coverings on public transport, shops, museums and galleries from the end of April rather than, eventually, August.
Mr O’Connor: Right, Mr Khan, I’m not going to ask you any more about that issue. My Lady, I wonder if that’s a convenient moment.
Lady Hallett: Certainly. I shall return at 12.05.
(11.50 am)
(A short break)
(12.05 pm)
Lady Hallett: Mr O’Connor.
Mr O’Connor: Mr Khan, I want to move on and ask you some questions about your engagement with, first of all, other mayors within England, and, secondly, with the leaders of the devolved administrations during the pandemic.
So addressing the mayors first, of course we have had a discussion about the sense in which London was a special case in those early weeks and months of the pandemic, the virus being ahead in London compared to other parts of the country. But it’s right, isn’t it, you describe in your witness statement, following the first lockdown, a degree of engagement and discussion between you and the other elected mayors in the country?
Mr Sadiq Khan: It’s true. At the time, there were nine metro mayors across the country, and we meet regularly – we met more regularly during the pandemic – and it’s cross-party. I think there were two Conservative, seven Labour, and it’s a very collegiate fora for us to discuss what’s happening in our respective regions.
Counsel Inquiry: Just let me interrupt you, and let’s look, if we may, at paragraph 48 of your witness statement where you address this issue.
The M9/M10 group of mayors, as you say, the number increased by one during the pandemic. Do we take it, from what you just said, that this was an arrangement that pre-dated the pandemic?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Yeah. We used to meet less frequently before the pandemic, and it has become less frequent since the pandemic ended, but during the course of the pandemic, lots of regular meetings, and our staff were on first-name terms because of the good collabs of working.
Counsel Inquiry: And then if we scroll down to the next paragraph of the statement, you then talk about calls with leaders of the devolved administrations.
Was this something that took place between you and individual leaders of the devolved administrations, or was it linked in some way to the M9/M10 meetings?
Mr Sadiq Khan: No, these were separate meetings between me and the respective First Ministers that took place after my invitation to the first COBR. And when Michael Gove took over some of the work when Boris Johnson was in hospital, we’d meet, the First Ministers and myself, with Michael Gove and others.
Counsel Inquiry: What were the themes of the discussions, both between you and the other mayors, and separately with your discussions with the leaders of the devolved administrations?
Mr Sadiq Khan: It was sharing our experiences in our respective areas. What was working, what wasn’t working, some of the papers that have been presented at COBR, our responses to those, those sort of conversations. Sometimes with the CDL, Michael Gove present; other times, us meeting separately.
Counsel Inquiry: There is one example that you give later on in your witness statement. It’s paragraph 236 on page 51. So this is an example of a call with First Ministers of the devolved nations in May, and you record there everyone apparently expressing concern that the government wasn’t engaging sufficiently, a feeling there had been a co-ordinated and a deliberate shift in the government’s approach.
Can you just expand on that. What sort of shift, and shift in what direction?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Yeah, I think the last COBR had happened on 10 May, and there was a concern about the mixed messages on the one hand, ostensibly return to work on the other hand, don’t use public transport. And there was a concern that there were these mixed messages about speaking to us and our experiences on the coalface. I’d argue Nicola Sturgeon or Mark Drakeford or Arlene Foster knows a lot more what’s happening in their respective regions than a civil servant in Whitehall or DFT, and that was the frustration that they were sharing with me. That was my frustration in London as well.
Counsel Inquiry: We have seen evidence that at around this time, and then as 2020 progressed, Mark Drakeford and others, he in particular, was writing letters asking for more COBR meetings. Is this part of that same dialogue?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Correct. I mean, from memory, the last COBR I attended was 10 May. I’m not aware if there were other COBRs with the First Ministers and without me. But it goes to my point earlier on, Mr O’Connor, about the usefulness of COBR in relation to that place where you can all come together, discuss these things. And there’s a huge strength, by the way, of being cross-party because you take away the single message, and you’ve agreed it after discussion. Those weren’t happening.
Counsel Inquiry: We’ve heard evidence from others, Mr Khan, that notwithstanding those benefits of COBR, the view was taken that it was just a – it was a – COBR is best utilised as a short-term measure and that it wasn’t an appropriate sort of forum to co-ordinate long-term pandemic management. What’s your view about that?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Whether it’s held in COBR or elsewhere, you can’t beat colleagues working together collegiately. It needs to be one where the Prime Minister is there because there’s the gravitas of being the Prime Minister – he can pull a lever and things will happen – but have everyone around the table. And there was an absence of these meetings between 10 May until September, by which stage things had got really bad. I was then invited to the September ones. In my view, had there been better processes, that would have led to better decision-making. In my view, poor process leads to poor judgement leads to poor decision-making, and that’s what we saw here.
Counsel Inquiry: I’m going to move on, Mr Khan, and just ask you a few questions on the subject of inequalities. There will be others who will ask you more detailed questions about – on that issue shortly.
You have already mentioned, in the course of your oral evidence, that one of the sort of – one of the group of duties, responsibilities, that you have as mayor is a duty to consider structural health inequalities and to prepare a strategy to address those inequalities; is that right?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: We know that, from a very early stage of the pandemic, it became apparent that the virus was having an unequal effect, and in particular on ethnic groups within London, that they had a more severe, pronounced effect on them.
Is that something that you became aware of at an early stage?
Mr Sadiq Khan: It was, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: How did you become aware of it?
Mr Sadiq Khan: It was clear from a number of metrics. One is, if you see the photographs of the first ten doctors who lost their lives, I think what strikes you is they’re all people of colour. We – for example, in relation to transport workers, I’m afraid in London we lost 105 transport workers. They lost their lives. I would write to every transport worker whose details I had, their bereaved families, and I noticed the names I was writing were all ethnic minority names. We knew from the conversations with health workers, social care workers, from transport workers, the issue of disproportionality. The phrase I used at the time is: we all might be facing the same storm, but people are in different sized boats.
Counsel Inquiry: Can I just ask you to look at a particular document in this respect, Mr Khan, and that is INQ000118888.
Now, we mentioned the group – did you call it STAC, or S-T-A-C – your version of SAGE in any event. And this is a report that appears to have been prepared by that body dealing with health inequalities. And it’s a relatively early document, in terms of the pandemic. It’s 22 April.
Did you commission this document, or did someone else ask them to do this work?
Mr Sadiq Khan: No, I’d have asked them to look into this.
Counsel Inquiry: It’s drafted, I think we see at the end of the document, by Professor Kevin Fenton. Yes, if we look, perhaps, at page 6.
He was the chair of STAC, was he?
Mr Sadiq Khan: If I explain, Kevin took over from Paul Plant. So if you remember the name you gave to me before, Professor Paul Plant, Professor Kevin Fenton took over from Professor Paul Plant, so Kevin became my statutory health adviser.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. I’m not going to take you all through this report; it’s relatively detailed, Mr Khan. But would it be a fair summary to say that at this early stage it was flagging up the obvious signs of unequal impact and advocating more research, more data, more understanding of the problem?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Absolutely.
Counsel Inquiry: We know that it was Professor Fenton who went on to prepare sort of PHE inequality reports later in the year. Did you have any involvement in those?
Mr Sadiq Khan: I spoke to Kevin almost daily, so I can’t say what direct involvement I had in the paper, but yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Let me move on, Mr Khan, and ask you questions about events later in 2020. For these purposes, if we can start with paragraph 123 of your statement, on page 28. You’ve described there attending in September of 2020 a summit meeting. It’s described as a London Covid-19 summit meeting, with representatives of the UK Government. We see Matt Hancock; I think he was at that stage Sir Edward Lister, who was the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, and, on your side, London’s political leadership.
As you say, a meeting that had been requested by the government to agree the escalation process for London in response to any further outbreaks.
I’m going to take you to a slide in a moment, just so we can see in a bit more detail what was being discussed, but can you just introduce it for us and tell us what this meeting was all about.
Mr Sadiq Khan: This was an example of an excellent initiative from the government. The government saying, let’s work together in relation to a process where central government, regional government, local government, can work towards how we decide to escalate the process, and I’d hope de-escalate it as well, and that builds confidence and engenders confidence, but also, very importantly, it means the centre knows what’s happening at the coalface, so, you know, that’s describing what this meeting was, and I think it was an excellent initiative.
Counsel Inquiry: Let’s look, then, if we can, at INQ000118968.
We start off on the first page. If we go over to page 3, please, we can see the date.
These were a series of slides that were used at that meeting, Mr Khan; is that right?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Yes, it’s basically agreeing the metrics by which we decide to, you know, go up or down.
Counsel Inquiry: Then if we go over to page 4, I absolutely am not going it invite us to go into all the detail of this, Mr Khan, but perhaps the diagram tells a fairly simple story. The phrase that was used was “escalation”, and does this demonstrate that the detailed thinking that was being done about how a process should take place from a consideration of enhanced measures in a particular area, how the debate would take place, starting at the bottom and ending with a decision made by the Prime Minister?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Yeah, that’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: I wanted to come to your views on this process, which you’ve described in your witness statement as being very good, but this was a meeting requested by the government, and as you’ve said, you regarded it as being a very helpful initiative.
Mr Sadiq Khan: Yeah, we did a lot of this work in advance of the meeting, but it really was a good example of them recognising London is different to other parts of the country maybe, but also you need to have partnership between the centre, regional and local.
Counsel Inquiry: Just to be clear, this was something that was agreed prior to the introduction of the so-called tiers system –
Mr Sadiq Khan: Right.
Counsel Inquiry: – which came in October?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Was there discussion of a possible tier system at that stage, or was this taking place, as it were, completely independently of that plan that was to follow?
Mr Sadiq Khan: It was – it was independent. The tiering came later on, I think in October-ish, from memory.
Counsel Inquiry: Do you know – we can obviously ask others; we have other witnesses today – but do you know whether similar discussions were being held around the country or not?
Mr Sadiq Khan: I’m not sure if they were, but I would have shared this with the metro mayors when it came to our meetings because we did tend to share best practice, so I’ve just said it’s (unclear) initiative, so I’d have said – I’m sure I’d have shared with the metro mayors this initiative.
Counsel Inquiry: So that was the plan for escalation, and, as we’ve said, the meeting was on 11 September. In fact, as you also describe in your statement and as we will come to see, really quite shortly after that, I think we’ll look at a letter dated 18 September, you were writing to Boris Johnson advocating in fact just what this plan anticipated, which is increased measures in London, were you not?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right. This is in advance of any tiering system, but yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Let’s look at the letter of 18 September.
It’s INQ000118973.
A letter from you to the Prime Minister, Mr Khan. Picking it up about four paragraphs down, please, you say:
“It is increasingly likely that additional measures will soon be required to slow the spread of the virus …”
You were of the firm view:
“… we should not wait for this virus to again spiral out of control before taking action and the best thing for both public health and the economy is new restrictions imposed early, rather than a full lockdown when it’s too late.
“London was too late into lockdown in March.”
You say:
“This decision cost lives … We simply cannot afford to be slow to respond again.”
Before I ask you to expand on those views, Mr Khan, the Inquiry has heard a lot of evidence from government officials and also from scientists on SAGE and SPI-M and so on who were analysing the position at that stage and reaching their own views on, as it became known, a circuit breaker at around this time.
Did you have access to your own independent scientific views which led to this advocacy of a lockdown or not?
Mr Sadiq Khan: No. Our information is from – the information we had from the partners we’ve got across London, they could be because we’re seeing more admissions in hospital, more use of ICUs in the hospitals. It could be in relation to prevalence. There was problem with a lack of testing, so we were using other metrics to assess how good or bad things were. We were also aware of the some of the measures used in other parts of the country because of concerns they had.
Counsel Inquiry: All of those things would have been available to the Prime Minister, to SAGE, to the Cabinet?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Yeah, yeah. All of it is all open source data. At most the advice from Professor Kevin Fenton, which again was accessible to the government as well.
Counsel Inquiry: There was, as we can probably recall and we can certainly see in the evidence, a debate that was raging at this time as to whether a circuit breaker should be imposed. You were expressing your view but not putting before the Prime Minister any new evidence –
Mr Sadiq Khan: No.
Counsel Inquiry: – on the subject.
Mr Sadiq Khan: No. No.
Counsel Inquiry: We mentioned the tiers a moment ago, and it was in October that the tiering system was introduced.
As I imagine we’ll hear later on today, that was the subject of some controversy amongst other mayoral regions, particularly in the northwest. It’s apparent from your statement that, in fact, there wasn’t the same degree of dispute about the tiering system in London; is that right?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Because colleagues in the northwest went into a higher tier, so hospitality was seriously affected and there was a lack of financial support, there wasn’t that tension in London because we’d not got to there.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, exactly, so when the tiers were introduced, you were initially in Tier 1.
Mr Sadiq Khan: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: And you actually asked to go up to Tier 2. Was that by means of the escalation process that we were just looking at?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Correct, because the metrics we had, the data we had, was showing us things were getting worse. We were saying, look, let’s go into Tier 2 to avoid a leapfrog from Tier 1 to lockdown because that will hopefully address some of the concerns we have. That’s a good example of partnership working.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, and as you say, that debate was taking place, as we now know, in the run-up to what became the second lockdown.
Mr Sadiq Khan: Yeah. Just to complete the story, in advance of the second lockdown in November, I had lobbied the Prime Minister for a circuit breaker. I’d seen the SAGE advice but also half term at the end of October was an opportunity for that circuit breaker. The government didn’t listen to my lobbying. Subsequently, in November, went into lockdown.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, and you describe in your statement your reaction when that lockdown was finally announced – frustration – but also you make the point about the degree of warning that you received about that decision.
Mr Sadiq Khan: Here’s the point, Mr O’Connor. Before lockdown 1, we knew what was happening around the world. We delayed and we dithered. Lockdown 2 may not have even been needed had the government taken the advice from SAGE, for example, for a circuit breaker, the lobbying from people like me. So another example of delay necessitating a second lockdown. And that’s relevant to your point about crippling our economy. Had action been taken sooner, I argued there would not need to be a lockdown maybe and means less damage to the economy.
Mr O’Connor: Mr Khan, thank you very much. Those are all my questions. There will now be some questions from others.
The Witness: Sure.
Lady Hallett: Ms Campbell.
Questions From Ms Campbell KC
Ms Campbell: Mr Khan, the questions I ask are on behalf of the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice Northern Ireland and, in fact, the UK families as well.
I have been granted permission to ask you questions on two topics. The first is the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on certain sectors of our society, and as was alluded earlier, there are additional questions on that.
You said in your witness statement, in fact on a number of occasions, that it became clear as the pandemic progressed that the crisis had not only exposed but really increased deep-seated inequalities in London and across the country and that it became clear also that it had disproportionately impacted on our black and minority ethnic communities, those on the lowest incomes, Londoners in particular living in the most deprived areas for whom perhaps overcrowding and poverty may be an issue.
And you called this evidence of structural racism at a relatively early stage. Would you agree?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s what I said, yeah.
Ms Campbell KC: Now, you also called for a new social contract that advances the twin causes where we see racial and economic inequality, and you’ve told us something about that today. But one of the issues that you identified early on was that ethnicity was not being recorded on death certificates, particularly in – obviously in hospitals and that the disproportionate impact of Covid on our black and minority ethnic communities therefore was not being properly understood and properly recorded.
I wonder if we can look at a document, please.
It’s INQ000118895.
This is a letter that you wrote to Matt Hancock on 7 May 2020, urging him to take action to introduce routine ethnic data collection within death registrations in England.
Could we focus in, please, on the top two paragraphs, or perhaps top three paragraphs. We can see the date being 7 May 2020. You write to seek the government’s urgent action to introduce routine ethnic data collection within death registrations in England, and you set out why that is, that evidence is emerging of how black, Asian and minority ethnic communities may be disproportionately affected by Covid-19, including sadly by deaths complicated by this deadly virus. And in the third paragraph, your concerns were that:
“… lack of ethnic data recording in death registrations is holding us back from getting a full picture …”
It would seem, and correct me if I’m wrong, that you received no immediate reply to that letter; is that right?
Mr Sadiq Khan: I didn’t. A couple of weeks later, I then wrote to the Home Secretary because of my concerns about the lack of response, but it appeared to me the government didn’t really understand the issues that I was talking about. You mentioned the phrase “structural inequalities”, “structural racism”. They can be for direct reasons or indirect reasons. It goes to the point I made to Mr O’Connor about the advantage of the politicians, the decision-makers and COBR having their own experiences. It’s not a criticism; it’s an observation. Very few Cabinet members around there probably represent a diverse community, understand overcrowded accommodation can lead to the virus spreading, more so in London, inter-generational households, often people living with grandad, grandfather, parents. But also, to get around London, you’ve got to use the buses and Tubes. And also, you know that people of black, Asian and minority ethnic background have other illnesses which means if they get the virus, the consequences are more serious.
I didn’t realise, if I’m honest, until the pandemic that we didn’t record ethnicity when it came to death certificates. So we’re asking a basic question: what percentage of those who have died who had Covid are black Caribbean or black African or Pakistani heritage or Bangladeshi heritage? I couldn’t be told because it wasn’t recorded.
Ms Campbell KC: It’s right, in fact, you did write to the Home Secretary on 26 May, and we have that letter disclosed to us. It wasn’t, in fact, until 22 October 2020, so five months after you raised this in correspondence, that the government eventually announced that it would be mandating the recording of ethnicity on death certificates. Did you consider in general terms that the government were proactive in trying to understand or to identify and address the disproportionate impact of Covid on our BAME communities?
Mr Sadiq Khan: No. If you read the letter from the junior minister to me, I was given short shrift. There was no understanding of why it’s important but also no action. And, by the way, still to this date, the ethnicity of people is not recorded on the death certificate. It is in Scotland, by the way. Not in England or Wales –
Ms Campbell KC: Thank you.
Mr Sadiq Khan: – or Northern Ireland.
Ms Campbell KC: Yes. And moving then to Northern Ireland, I want to ask you, please, about the issue of communication and what you have identified as an absence of engagement by central government with regional and local leaders on decision-making.
You raise this as a concern in your statement, and you give an example in your witness statement that on 10 May 2020, you attended a COBR meeting and that one of the First Ministers there present urged the government to engage in meaningful conversation, saying that leaders should not be reading each other’s position in newspapers.
Was that a concern that you shared in May 2020?
Mr Sadiq Khan: It was. It was a concern I shared in March as well. If you recall, one of the reasons why after my first COBR I asked to meet Boris Johnson was because of things I was seeing in the newspaper about what the governmental was considering. It was a common theme in relation to – at various stages through the pandemic, us discovering stuff in the media. And the conversations I had with, you know, Nicola, Mark, and Arlene, and Michelle was us sharing our frustration sometimes about stuff being said in the newspapers that we either hadn’t agreed upon or hadn’t said.
Ms Campbell KC: How did that realising what was happening from newspaper reports impact on your ability to deliver important public health messages and to co-ordinate the pandemic response in London?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Well, by and large, I think the First Ministers, the metro mayors, work really closely together with government. We can be trusted allies. And this is the frustrating thing. If the government under different Prime Ministers can trust me on issues to do with terrorism, counterterrorism and other issues, you’d think they’d be able to trust us when it comes to issues to do with a civil emergency, a crisis like the pandemic.
I think there was bad faith on the part of some members of the government, without getting party political, and they projected that on us, whether it’s First Ministers or Mayors, which I think is unfair.
Ms Campbell KC: Perhaps we could look a little bit more closely at one example of something that you learned from a newspaper report, and it’s in the summer of 2020 when you learned of a major – of a government exercise to deal with what may be a major resurgence in cases within London and the suggestion that the M25 would be used as a quarantine ring. There we are. Thank you. The date of this letter is 3 August 2020, which, as it happens, is a Monday. You say:
“Dear Prime Minister
“It is with great surprise that we read in the Sunday papers that [the] Government held a critical exercise last week in which a major resurgence in Covid-19 infections in London was a central scenario. According to media reports, the plans included using the M25 as a quarantine ring …”
You go on that your:
“… surprise is that such far-reaching contingency plans have been discussed and tested without the involvement or awareness of London’s government. This is clearly totally unacceptable and an affront to London and Londoners.”
Can we scroll down the page, please.
You observe just in the second paragraph from the bottom of the screen it is 12 weeks since you as mayor were:
“… last invited to COBR on behalf of London and its nine million citizens. [And the] decisions continue to be taken without consultation with those who run and understand the country’s biggest city.”
Can we go, please, to the next page to see, I hope, that this is a letter that is co-signed by you, if we can just scroll down, but also by Councillor Peter John OBE, who is the chair of London Councils, of which you have told us there were or there are 32; is that right?
Now, you learned about this in a newspaper on, presumably, Sunday 12 or 2 August 2020; is that right?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That’s right. Can I just explain? It goes back to your previous question about being the voice of London, which is these are 32 boroughs of three different political parties plus the City of London Corporation, which is apolitical. One of my jobs is to hold us all together. Some are outer London, some are inner London, some are central London, and you do that by engendering confidence because we’re a trusted ally of the government. And it makes working relationships really difficult when we’re discovering stuff as trusted allies in newspapers.
Ms Campbell KC: Well, this was a little bit more than even just stuff. This was a plan to deal with a major resurgence in London without incorporating your view, or indeed those of the 32 London Councils.
In practical terms, what was the impact of your exclusion from contingency planning such as this?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Well, in my view, us not being trusted meant that we couldn’t give the advice from the coalface that may have made a difference. We now know that the entire country went into lockdown in November. I think that could have been averted, had we been involved earlier, but more importantly, more important than that, I think lives may not have been lost. It upsets me when I think that more than 20,000 Londoners lost their lives because of this pandemic. It breaks my heart 105 transport workers lost their lives because of this pandemic. I genuinely think fewer lives may have been lost had there been a more collegiate response from the government. Poor process, poor judgement, poor decision-making.
Ms Campbell KC: It may well be that that answers my final question, because it wasn’t until 1 October, some two months later, that you received a response to this letter. A response came from Mr Hancock in which he acknowledged that effective local management of any outbreak was critical.
Did you – having received that response on 1 October, and of course we know that’s before the second lockdown, did you consider that the response adequately engaged with or addressed the concerns that you had raised?
Mr Sadiq Khan: No. I think if I answer by saying this: the last COBR the directly elected Mayor of London attended was in May. I think that says it all.
Ms Campbell: Thank you.
Thank you, my Lady.
Lady Hallett: Thank you, Ms Campbell.
Mr Thomas.
Questions From Professor Thomas KC
Professor Thomas: Good afternoon, Mayor Khan. Just so you know who I am, I’m representing FEMHO, the Federation of Ethnic Minority Healthcare Organisations.
I’ve got two questions for you. My first is this: mayor Khan, recognising the challenges posed by the evolving nature of this pandemic, FEMHO is keen to understand the timeline of responses, okay? But they acknowledge the complexity of the situation and the circumstances, so let me put my first question to you.
Firstly, in your evidence, in your statement, you refer to a thematic lack of communication between yourself and government during the essential early stages, and you state that you have no doubt that lives were lost as a result.
So, question: what impact do you think this had on, in the context of black, Asian, minority ethnic health inequalities, and what could have been done differently from your end in the context of black, Asian, minority ethnic health inequalities? Had there been clearer and earlier communications?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Well, firstly, because we still don’t record ethnicity on death certificates, I would argue we’re not fully seized of the impact on black, Asian, minority ethnic people across the country.
Directly in relation to health workers, I heard stories about Londoners who are Filipinos who thought they had to work in the wards without PPE because their visa may be taken away if they didn’t do so. These are Londoners, by the way, who happen to be Filipinos on work permits. Query, is that properly recorded when it comes to a death certificate and other metrics as well?
In relation to Transport for London, for which I am responsible, I asked UCL to do some work straightaway in March/April about the impact on our workers and they reached a number of conclusions which we acted upon. Our buses were made much more safe because we were cognisant of the impacts on our workers, particularly because a big proportion of our transport workers are black, Asian, minority ethnic, by the way. So are social care workers, so are health workers. So a perspex screen, people using the middle door rather than the front door, ventilation on our buses and so forth. That’s what I had responsibility for. I can’t answer for social care, healthcare, retail, where others had responsibility.
I do know this, though: I was reminded over the weekend in preparation for today. Mr O’Connor referred to my meeting with Boris Johnson in between 16 March and 20 March. And the minutes of that meeting show I refer to ZHC, zero hours contract, gig economy. Both those have higher than normal representation from black, Asian and minority ethnics. An example of indirectly not seeing the consequences of a lack of financial support for those people. If you can only put food on the table and a roof over your head by working, by going to work, what are you going to choose to do? No financial support given to you because no support for zero hours contract, no support for the gig economy. Those self-employed, by the way, for the first few months only got statutory sick pay. Disproportionately, those people tend to be black, Asian, minority ethnics.
Professor Thomas KC: Let me move on to my final question, and again I just want to put this in context. Given your prior knowledge in relation to the health inequalities, including your statutory responsibility to publish the health inequality strategy, the fact you say in your statement that you were aware of and drawn attention to negative health outcomes because of the pandemic, as well as increasing information that was coming through at the early stages of the pandemic, such as by late January there was concern about the virus building and a considerable amount of work being done looking at the emergency risk. We can also agree that in your statement you say between February and March 2020 members of your team were meeting the London Resilience Forum and Public Health England representatives almost on a daily basis. By 2 March 2020, the strategic co-ordination group was established. We know that. And by 11 March 2020, you were told by the Chief Medical Officer that there was going to be a global pandemic. The first proactive step you took in addressing the issue of minority Asian health inequalities was in May. I think that was 7 May.
My question is: difficult situation. There’s not good communication between the government and your office. Can you just help because my members would like to know: what more could and should have been done?
Mr Sadiq Khan: Well, first to paint the picture, it’s worth just stating what did happen to give you the picture in advance of that.
So in advance of the meeting with Chris Whitty, we’d organised for enhanced cleaning on public transport. Important for commuters but also workers as well.
Professor Thomas KC: Yes.
Mr Sadiq Khan: As I said, disproportionate number of black, Asian and minority ethnic. In advance of me going to the first COBR, we cancelled St Patrick’s Day. Big, big, big Londoners – big London community with Irish descent, and as they go to St Patrick’s Day as was really important.
One of the things I raised with the Prime Minister when I met him in between first COBR and second COBR that I went to was the importance of financial support. In fact, after my first COBR on 16 March, I wrote to the Prime Minister suggesting certain things he could do which would address the issue, the core of what it’s saying, and that’s financial support.
I’m not sure – I’m not sure if the decision-makers understood the indirect impact of lack of financial support, of a city like London which is 40% black, Asian and minority ethnic, how we get around. Issues around housing. I’m not sure if the government understood. If you catch the virus because you go to work in a shop, that’s bad enough, but you will go home and – you will go home and give it to mum and dad who live with you and a child who may have asthma. I’m not sure if the government understood that early doors. Issues about overcrowding, they didn’t – really understood. Issues around: actually, you may not be articulate to advocate for PPE, as somebody who is working class, black, who is a porter, somebody who is a Filipino nurse working in the NHS, a bus driver. And so it’s really, really challenging. I’m not sure if the government got that.
We worked really closely, though, to reassure with trade unions who were fantastic from Unite doing bus drivers, RMT, ASLEF, TSSA on the Underground and others that I was responsible for. Other trade unions were being proactive in relation to their members, hospitals, social care. You have been – it’s been pointed out by Mr O’Connor, me lobbying for personal protective equipment. That was the lobbying coming from council leaders as well. It goes back to the point that Mr O’Connor and I began with, which is that as imperfect as it is, the advantage of COBR is those experiences people have around the table with the politicians which adds to the conclusion the Prime Minister makes when it comes to making decisions.
I saw the value I added in Grenfell. I saw the value I added as Mayor of London with the terror attacks in 2017. I saw the value I added as Mayor of London when it came to making sure Her Majesty’s funeral was successful. I wasn’t there. I was absent in February and half of March. One of the things I reflect upon is the difference we could have made had we been trusted earlier to be part of that process.
Professor Thomas KC: Well, it comes to this, does it not: lives – more lives could have been saved, surely?
Mr Sadiq Khan: That was the conclusion of the UCL report when it came to our bus drivers. And it upsets me as the chair of TfL. It upsets me bearing in mind who my dad was, that the conclusion of UCL was that, actually, had we gone into lockdown sooner, there would have been less social transmission, less community transmission. Had we brought in the changes we brought in in our bus garages, in our depots, in our buses, in our Tube stations, fewer people would have lost their lives. Had we brought in the lockdown sooner, there could have been social distancing, less transmission of the disease. Had face coverings been brought in sooner, those with the illness asymptomatic may not have been passing it on. Without a doubt, the premise of your question is right: had action been taken sooner, less lives would have been lost.
Professor Thomas KC: And forgive me for putting this, on behalf of those who I represent, it would have had – it would have been less impact on healthcare and hospitals.
Mr Sadiq Khan: But also our economy. And also our economy. I mean, so this point about the impact on our economy, there seemed to have been a lack of understanding about the inextricable link between lives and livelihoods –
Lady Hallett: I think you’ve made that point, with respect, Mr Khan.
Professor Thomas: My Lady, that’s all I ask.
Thank you very much.
The Witness: Thank you.
Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed for your help, Mr Khan.
The Witness: Thank you.
Lady Hallett: You’re now free to go, thank you.
The Witness: Thank you.
(The witness withdrew)
Mr O’Connor: My Lady, we’re going to move straight to our next witness, who is Mr Burnham.
Lady Hallett: Thank you.
Mr Keating: Yes, thank you.