Tory leadership – live: Covid scientists hit back at Sunak over ‘blatant attack’

The chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus has hit out at Rishi Sunak following his comments about the pandemic, saying the government in which he was chancellor gave the UK “the worst of all worlds”.

“In his desperation to salvage his floundering leadership ambitions, the former chancellor’s post-match punditry ignores that it was his government’s indecisiveness and unscientific approach which gave us the worst of all worlds; the biggest economic hit in the G7, a tragically high death toll, enormous NHS waiting lists and ironically, more time in lockdown,” said Lib Dem MP Layla Moran.

“Having been responsible for this mismanagement and fined for breaking his own rules, Rishi Sunak has nothing more to say to us about the pandemic beyond apologising and submitting himself and all relevant evidence to the official Covid inquiry which must report before the next general election.”

Asked whether he was worried about the future of the NHS under a tax-cutting economy run by Liz Truss, the health secretary said she was “the longest-serving Cabinet minister” – but did not comment on her tax policies.

Speaking outside Moorfields Eye Hospital in central London, Steve Barclay told the Press Association news agency: “Well I think the job of the parliamentary party is to give party membership two serious, credible candidates for the party members to then choose from and that is what my fellow MPs have done.

“Liz Truss is the longest-serving Cabinet minister and foreign secretary, and Rishi served as chancellor through the pandemic at a time when unemployment was forecast to rise to 12 per cent, and actually we’ve had the lowest unemployment for 40 or 50 years.

“And I worked very closely with Rishi as his deputy in the Treasury, and I saw the intellect, the ability, the innovation that he brought to things like the furlough.”

NHS palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke has criticised Rishi Sunak’s Covid comments as “absolute nonsense”.

Describing the situation last January as “the worst weeks of my professional career” with “desperate” people arriving at London hospitals having died in the back seat of an Uber after being told they would wait hours for an ambulance.

“Patients who didn’t have Covid at that time were also dying, because we were overwhelmed. So to now pretend that that was bad practice and that lockdown was unnecessary is absolute nonsense,” Dr Clarke told LBC.

Our deputy political editor Rob Merrick reports:

Rishi Sunak says he would back Liz Truss’s controversial tax cuts if she wins the Tory leadership race and denied he will quit politics if he loses.

Earlier this week, Mr Sunak hinted he would reject a job in a Truss cabinet after their bitter battle and refused to say he would back her £30bn-plus tax cuts which he has attacked as a “fantasy”.

But the former chancellor told the BBC the expected winner would enjoy his backing for her tax cuts, saying: “Of course I’m going to support a Conservative government. It goes without saying.”

In his latest analysis piece, our associate editor Sean O’Grady examines Liz Truss’s response to how the thought of having to the nuclear button makes her feel. He writes:

“One can imagine, indeed recall, how Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair used to deal with such a public challenge. There’d be a slight outage, a little pursing of the lips, a furrow of the brow, and then a measured response loaded with the import of their solemn duty and obligation to protect the British people.

“Truss, by contrast, just stared ahead, and answered as if in a job interview for head of sales or a rookie parliamentary candidate: “I think it’s an important duty of the prime minister and I’m ready to do it. I’m ready to do that.”

“Something in the answer suggested to me, that, even as foreign secretary, Truss hadn’t invested much thought in the possibility, despite the fact that Russian voices have publicly floated a nuclear escalation of the war in Ukraine.”

Scientists did not decide whether to close schools during the pandemic, a government adviser has said, after Rishi Sunak claimed that he fought against the closure of schools in an interview claiming experts were too “empowered” during the Covid crisis.

Professor Graham Medley from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “Government have the power, so if one member of cabinet thinks that scientific advice was too ‘empowered’ then it is a criticism of their colleagues rather than the scientists.”

“The Sage meetings were about the science, not the policy options, and the minutes reflect the scientific consensus at the time,” said Prof Medley, who was chair of SPI-M modelling sub-group of Sage that advised government in the pandemic .

He added: “Science has no place in the decision whether to close schools or not, but it does have a role to say what the impact on the epidemic might be.”

Rishi Sunak has said that his karaoke song of choice would be “Ice, Ice, Baby” by Vanilla Ice, telling a Facebook Q&A that although he was not a “massive karaoke fan” he could do the rap “quite happily”.

Questioner and ally Mel Stride joked that he thought Mr Sunak might choose “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor.

Mr Sunak also said that among those he has been starstruck by in the past were former BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg and TV presenter Andi Peters.

“I was very starstruck when I met Laura Kuenssberg,” he told a Facebook Q&A event. “She interviewed me as chancellor for the first time, I think on my 40th birthday … My team had to keep telling me, ‘stop being starstruck by her’. It was quite an amazing moment.”

Rishi Sunak has said Britain must “double down” on Brexit and “actually deliver” on the opportunity to strike more free trade deals around the world.

Asked at a Facebook Q&A if Brexit had reduced the intensity of trade with the EU, the ex-chancellor admitted the questioner was “right” to say trade intensity with the bloc has fallen.

“It’s unclear how much that decline in trade intensity is down to the after-effects of the pandemic … or resulted from changing trade patterns as a result of leaving the EU,” Mr Sunak said.

But he cited Britain having the “new power” to negotiate trade deals around the world as a “big tangible benefit” of Brexit, saying: “We’ve got to double down on that, we’ve got inject some new urgency into that … and find all those opportunities and actually deliver of them.”

Mr Sunak said the country had to “move on” from Brexit debates, adding: “We’ve got to stop referring to people as Leavers and Remainers because we’re all Brits.”

Scientists have hit back at Rishi Sunak following his criticism of top public health advisers during the Covid pandemic – comparing him to Donald Trump after he claimed it was wrong to “empower” scientists during the crisis and accused the Sage group of editing its minutes to hide dissenting opinions.

Professor Devi Sridhar – the public health expert who advised the Scottish government – warned there was no “voice of reason working to address big issues” in the Tory leadership contest and asked if it would have been better to “let the bodies pile high”, as Boris Johnson is reported to have said.

Dr Deepti Gurdasani also rejected Sunak’s claim that scientists were “empowered” during the pandemic – saying many experts were left “screaming helplessly” at the failure to act quickly enough.

Boris Johnson has issued the following message to students receiving their GCSE results: