Rishi Sunak dubbed ‘Dr Death’ in COVID WhatsApp messages

Published

11 months ago

October 20, 2023

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Rishi Sunak was described as “Dr Death” by one of the government’s top science officers at the height of the pandemic, WhatsApp messages have revealed.

A text conversation between Professor Dame Angela McLean and Professor John Edmunds from September 2020 – shortly after the then chancellor launched his Eat Out to Help Out scheme – was shown to the UK COVID-19 Inquiry on Thursday, with the pair appearing to be talking during a briefing.

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Dame Angela, who was then an adviser to the Ministry of Defence but is now the government’s chief scientific adviser, referred to someone else in the meeting – thought to be prominent lockdown sceptic Professor Carl Heneghan – as a “f***wit” during the discussion.

And COVID modeller Prof Edwards replied by saying: “Every statistic is wrong.”

But a few messages later, Dame Angela then sent a WhatsApp message to her colleague saying, “Dr Death the Chancellor”, followed by: “In ONS you’d see it.”

Prof Edmunds appeared at the COVID inquiry hearing on Thursday and was asked by lead counsel Hugo Keith if the comments were made in relation to Mr Sunak’s scheme.

Eat Out to Help Out offered discounts to diners throughout August 2020 to get them back to restaurants and pubs as people cautiously came out of the first lockdown.

But a study in 2021 later showed the scheme had contributed to a rise in infections.

Replying to the question, Prof Edmunds said: “Honestly, it’s so long ago I wouldn’t know, but it could well be.”

However, earlier in the session, the professor of epidemiology and population health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine did say he was “still angry” about Eat Out to Help Out.

“It was one thing taking the foot off the brake, which is what we had been doing by easing restrictions, but to put your foot on the accelerator seemed perverse and to spend public money to do that when 45,000 people had just died,” he told the inquiry.

“I don’t want to blame Eat Out to Help Out for the second wave as that’s not the case, but the optics of it. Yes, the pub and restaurant sector needed support, but this is not really just about supporting them, they could have just given them the money.

“This was a scheme that encouraged people to take an epidemiological risk. It only applied if you went into the restaurant and ate in the restaurant – it didn’t apply to take out.”

A spokesperson for COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, Naomi Fulop, said the public inquiry had already shown there was “absolutely no consultation with the government’s scientific advisers on Eat Out to Help Out, that it contributed to the loss of thousands of lives, put unnecessary pressure on the NHS and plunged the country into a brutal second lockdown”.

She added: “It’s unbearable to think that if it wasn’t for Rishi Sunak’s reckless, unscientific and callous approach, my Mum might still be with me.

“When our current chief scientific adviser has referred to our prime minister as ‘Dr Death’, how can any of us have faith in our government if another pandemic strikes?”

A government source said: “We designed the Eat Out to Help Out scheme to protect two million jobs in hospitality, and statistics show that the scheme brought back 400,000 people from furlough whilst safely restoring consumer confidence.

“Local take-up of the Eat Out to Help Out scheme was not positively correlated with COVID rates in any English region or country.”

Politics

Lisa Nandy says Sir Keir Starmer ‘very sensible’ to accept football tickets worth thousands

Published

13 hours ago

September 21, 2024

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Lisa Nandy says Sir Keir Starmer 'very sensible' to accept football tickets worth thousands

Lisa Nandy has said Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to accept thousands of pounds worth of football tickets was “very sensible”.

The minister for culture, media and sport also said she had never accepted free clothes from a donor.

Speaking to Sky News at the start of the Labour Party conference today, the MP for Wigan said: “The problem that has arisen since [Sir Keir] became leader of the opposition and then prime minister is that for him to sit in the stands would require a huge security detail, would be disruptive for other people and it would cost the taxpayer a lot of money.

“So I think he’s taken a very sensible decision that’s not the right and appropriate thing to do, and it’s right to accept that he has to go and sit in a different area.

“But I know that he’d much rather be sitting in the stands cheering people on with the usual crowd that he’s been going to the football with for years.”

Ms Nandy also said while she has not accepted free clothes – joking “I think you can probably see that I choose my own clothes sadly” – she doesn’t “make any judgements about what other members of parliament do”.

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She said: “The only judgement I would make is if they’re breaking the rules, so they’re trying to hide what they’re doing. That’s when problems arise.

“Because the point of being open and transparent is that people can see where the relationships are, and they can then judge for themselves whether there’s been any undue influence.”

She asserted there had not been an undue influence in gifts accepted by senior Labour figures, adding: “We don’t want the news and the commentary to be dominated by conversations about clothes.

“We rightly have a system, I think, where the taxpayer doesn’t fund these things. We don’t claim on expenses for them. And so MPs will always take donations, will always take gifts in kind.

“MPs of all political parties have historically done that and that is the system that we have.”

She added: “I don’t think there’s any suggestion here that Keir Starmer has broken any rules. I don’t think there’s any suggestion that he’s done anything wrong.

“We expect our politicians to be well turned out, we expect them to be people who go out and represent us at different events and represent the country at different events and are clothed appropriately.

“But the point is that when we accept donations for that or for anything else, that we declare them and we’re open and transparent about them.”

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Sir Keir, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves said yesterday they will no longer accept donations in the future to pay for clothes.

The announcement followed criticism of Sir Keir’s gifts from donors, which included clothing worth £16,200 and multiple pairs of glasses worth £2,485, according to the MPs’ register of interests.

The register shows Ms Rayner has accepted clothing donations to the value of £2,230.

Sky News also revealed the scale of Sir Keir’s donations this week as part of our Westminster Accounts investigation.

Sir Keir was found to have received substantially more gifts and freebies than any other MP – his total in gifts, benefits, and hospitality topped £100,000 since December 2019.