The former chief executive of the NHS repeatedly refused to say whether Matt Hancock lied during the pandemic while health secretary.
Simon Stevens was in charge of NHS England between 2014 and 2021 and a key figure in the government’s response to coronavirus. Under questioning at the UK’s Covid-19 inquiry this morning he declined to say whether he considered Hancock to be “truthful” and admitted to occasional “tensions”. It comes after the inquiry was told by Dominic Cummings and Helen MacNamara this week that Hancock repeatedly failed to tell the truth about pandemic plans.
“There were occasional moments of tension and flashpoints, which is probably inevitable during the course of a 15-month-plus pandemic,” Stevens told Andrew O’Connor, counsel to the inquiry, when asked whether Hancock was “someone who was untruthful”.
