Hancock ‘wanted to choose who should live or die’ during Covid, NHS chief claims

MATT Hancock wanted to choose “who should live and who should die” if hospitals became overwhelmed during Covid, an NHS chief has claimed.

Lord Simon Stevens said the then-Health Secretary believed he should make the decision “rather than, say, the medical profession or the public”.

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The ex-NHS England chief exec told the Covid inquiry: “Fortunately, this horrible dilemma never crystallised.”

He added: “I certainly wanted to discourage the idea an individual Secretary of State . . . should decide how care would be provided.”

Lord Stevens also claimed senior ministers avoided Cobra meetings chaired by Mr Hancock.”

He wrote: “When Cobra meetings were chaired by the health secretary, other secretaries of state sometimes avoided attending and delegated to their junior ministers instead.”

Former Tory Mr Hancock has faced criticism for his handling of the pandemic — and was this week accused of being a “serial liar” by ex-Whitehall boss Helen MacNamara.

But the Health Department’s top civil servant defended him against such claims — saying a lot of people felt Hancock had been “over-optimistic”.

Sir Christopher Wormald said: “There were a lot of people who said he was over-optimistic about what would happen and over-promised on what could be delivered.

“That was said really quite a lot. I think it was a very small number of people who said that he was actually telling untruths.”