Matt Hancock wanted to decide ‘who should live and who should die’ if the NHS became overwhelmed during the pandemic, the Covid Inquiry heard today.
Simon Stevens, ex-chief executive of the health service, said the comments were made during a February 2020 crunch meeting, where it was set out that the UK could see 840,000 deaths in the first wave under a reasonable worst-case scenario.
In his witness statement, he revealed how the former Health Secretary ‘took the position’ that he — rather than medics or the public — ‘should ultimately decide’ which patients should be cared for.
While noting that this situation ‘never crystalised’ during Covid, he said he would ‘discourage the idea’ that any individual should ever make this decision.
Matt Hancock ‘wanted to play God during Covid’: Ex-NHS chief Sir Simon Stevens reveals former Health Secretary pushed to ‘decide who should live and who should die’ if hospitals became overwhelmed
Lord Simon Stevens said comments were made during a February 2020 meeting
He said Matt Hancock believed that he should decide ‘who should die’
Matt Hancock wanted to decide ‘who should live and who should die’ if the NHS became overwhelmed during the pandemic, the Covid Inquiry heard today.
Simon Stevens, ex-chief executive of the health service, said the comments were made during a February 2020 crunch meeting, where it was set out that the UK could see 840,000 deaths in the first wave under a reasonable worst-case scenario.
In his witness statement, he revealed how the former Health Secretary ‘took the position’ that he — rather than medics or the public — ‘should ultimately decide’ which patients should be cared for.
While noting that this situation ‘never crystalised’ during Covid, he said he would ‘discourage the idea’ that any individual should ever make this decision.
Led by the Cabinet Office, the purpose was to set out how the Government would respond to a ‘reasonable worst case scenario’ in which there are 1.6million new cases per week — of which 1.25 per cent are fatal — and 860,000 deaths are forecast in the coming months.
Inquiry counsel Andrew O’Connor said the exercise ‘provoked a discussion’ about who should be responsible for making decisions about prioritising and allocating stretched NHS resources in this situation.
In a witness statement to the inquiry, Lord Stevens wrote: ‘My sense at the time was that it [the planning exercise] helpfully sensitised a wider range of Government departments [beyond the health sector] to the type of pressures the UK might experience.
‘It did result in — to my mind at least — an unresolved but fundamental ethical debate about a scenario in which a rising number of Covid patients overwhelmed the ability of hospitals to look after them and other non-Covid patients.
‘The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care took the position that in this situation he — rather than, say the medical profession or the public — should ultimately decide who should live and who should die.
‘Fortunately this horrible dilemma never crystalised.’
Mr O’Connor noted that Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, a former Health Secretary, ‘took a different view’ during Exercise Cygnus — a 2016 Government simulation of a flu outbreak.
Mr Hunt told the Covid inquiry in June that, at that time of the exercise, there was a protocol requiring the Health Secretary to ‘flick a switch’ and decide who should be cared for.
But he said ministers should not be asked to ‘play God’ and deprive people of a hospital bed, so ordered that the policy be changed, concluding that it was ‘inappropriate’ for this decision to be taken ‘away from the front line’.
Mr O’Connor told Lord Stevens that Mr Hancock ‘took a very different view’ and asked whether his stance was ‘an appropriate line to take’ or ‘desirable’.
Read More: Matt Hancock ‘wanted to play God during Covid’
