Sadiq Khan: Mayor of London ‘alarmed’ at being ‘kept in dark’ over Covid, inquiry told
Sadiq Khan was left “alarmed” after being “kept in the dark” over the scale of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, the official UK inquiry has heard.
The mayor of London, who gave evidence to the central London inquiry this morning, said he could have done more to mitigate the disease’s impact on the city, had he known the facts.
Khan was invited to his first COBRA emergency meeting on March 16, 2020, after his previous requests to attend had been denied, he said.
“I had been kept in the dark as the elected mayor of London and I felt almost winded in relation to what was happening in London,” he said. “I was alarmed by what I was being told in relation to where we were and where we may go to.”
He told chairwoman Baroness Heather Hallett that he would have lobbied for lockdown earlier and called for the public to be told earlier only to use public transport if essential.
He later added: “I was told that something in London was different because I was told the pandemic was having an impact on London ahead of the rest of the country…. I think lives could have been saved if we were there earlier.”
The London mayor also told the inquiry that then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson “wasn’t aware” that other countries had imposed lockdowns in March 2020 – and said he cancelled London’s St Patrick’s Day parade after a “shocking” meeting with Professor Sir Chris Whitty.
Khan also expressed “frustration” that he and other devolved leaders would often learn about elements of the pandemic response from newspapers, rather than being directly told.
He added that “not being trusted” meant he had been unable to “give the advice from the coalface that may have made a difference” and saved more lives.
The mayor also said the government, at first, had “no understanding” of Covid-19’s impact on people of different ethnicities.
He said he wrote to then-health secretary Matt Hancock and then-home secretary Priti Patel in May 2020 to highlight the need to collect ethnicity data.
“It appeared to me the government didn’t really understand the issues that I was talking about,” he said. “There was no understanding of why it is important and also no action.”
Ethnicity data was not collected by the government until October 2020.
The inquiry continues, with Hancock and Johnson expected to give evidence in the coming days and weeks.
Cabinet secretary Simon Case, who is currently signed off from work for health reasons, is now not expected to give evidence this year – but will do so in early 2024.