UK politics live: Sajid Javid says ‘too early to know’ the lessons that can be learned from Covid crisis

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2021/oct/14/uk-politics-live-sajid-javid-covid-crisis-boris-johnson-keir-starmer-latest-updates

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Latest updates: health secretary says he is ‘sorry for the loss people have suffered’ but does not say what government could learn

Whitty says the winter is going to be “exceptionally difficult” for the NHS.

He says the worst predictions are unlikely to materialise, unless there is an extraordinary new variant that can escape the vaccines.

But he says flu will be a problem. He says there will be less natural immunity in the system, and the vaccines may not be as well matched as usual to the flu in circulation.

On top of that, there will be the usual winter problems, as well as the problems caused by the backlog, he says.

But he says the NHS is in a “much better place” than it was before.

Back at the RCGP conference, Prof Chris Whitty is asked what advice he has for GPs worried about the negative press they are receiving. He says there is an old saying that is completely right. It is:

In his interviews this morning Sajid Javid, the health secretary, also defended his plan to publish league tables for family doctors. He said:

Whitty says he thinks the debate about GPs seeing their patients in person or virtually has attracted “more heat” than necessary.

He says he does not think doctors have settled “at the right point yet”, but he says they need to optimise what works best for patients and what works best for doctors.

He says for many patients a telemedicine solution is best.

Q: Has Covid played out as you expected? And when is the next pandemic coming?

On the second, “I hope long after I’ve retired,” Whitty says.

But he says much of what he expected has come to pass.

Q: Why are health inequalities so high in the UK?

Whitty says he has never lived in a country without health inequalities.

He says deprivation and age are the key factors in health.

And he says in the UK there are places were deprivation has been a problem for years.

Q: What do politicians mean when they say they are following the science? And where does science end and politics begin?

Whitty says in an ideal world scientists would “set out the truth”, and politicians would turn that into policy.

In practice, it is messier, he says.

But he says he thinks there was a “genuine attempt” by the government and the opposition to understand the science.

There were a lot of voices, and at first political leaders found it hard to decide who to listen to.

But he says it is important to understand that science moves on. He says he would have said things initially he would not say now. And he thinks he may be giving advice now that would not apply in a year’s time. That is because the science moves on, he says.

He says scientific advisers should not have an antagonistic relationship with government.

At the Royal College of General Practitioners’ annual conference Prof Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, is taking part in a panel discussion now.

Prof Martin Marshall, chair of the RCGP, is interviewing him.

Whitty says polling show doctors have regained their place as the most trusted profession. He tells the audience that when people say that, they are thinking of GPs - “you” in the audience.

Good morning. On Tuesday morning, following the publication of a parliamentary report describing the government’s early handling of the coronavirus pandemic was one of the worst public health failures in UK history, the minister doing the morning interview round on behalf of No 10, Steve Barclay, refused to apologise. It did not look good, and since then the line has changed. Oliver Dowden, the Conservative party co-chair, did say sorry on Wednesday, and Sajid Javid, the health secretary, has been using the same language in his interview round on Thursday. This is what he told the Today programme:

But saying you are sorry about something is not an actual apology, which requires you to say you are sorry for something you did, and this was made clear when Today’s Martha Kearney asked Javid to explain what he was apologising for. Astonishingly, Javid could not say what lessons the government has learned from the Covid pandemic. This is how the exchange went.

This is surprising because there is near consensus in the medical and scientific community about multiple lessons that can clearly be learnt from the government’s handling of the pandemic. A good starting point was the report published on Tuesday (which was not over-harsh on the government), although Javid also told Today he had not read it in full yet.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: The latest NHS England waiting time figures are published.

Around 9.30am: Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, speaks to the Royal College of General Practitioners’ annual conference.

10am: Lord Goldsmith, the environment minister, gives evidence to a Lords committee about the contributions being made by government departments to the success of Cop26.

11.30am: Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, is expected to respond to a private notice question in the Lords about the Northern Ireland protocol.

12pm: Peers debate the problems facing social care.

And Sir Keir Starmer is on a visit to a steel plant today to highlight the problems faced by energy intensive industries.

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