UK Covid response was London-centric, Andy Burnham tells inquiry

Photograph: PA

Boris Johnson appeared to have no idea that Greater Manchester had spent months under tougher Covid restrictions than London, Andy Burnham has said, arguing that this exemplified an over-centralised approach to the pandemic.

Giving evidence to the inquiry into Covid, Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, said he felt his region was given a “punishment beating” in terms of less financial support after pushing back against regional restrictions.

He also told the hearing that Matt Hancock, the health secretary at the time, decided to impose severe so-called tier 3 restrictions on Greater Manchester in October 2020 despite believing the measures would be ineffective.

Recounting a phone call with Johnson at this time, Burnham said: “He was saying ‘we just need you to agree to these tier 3 restrictions and the package of support’ and I said ‘well, we can’t – it’s not enough. You know, we’ve been under restrictions for a long time.’ He said: ‘What do you mean?’ I said: ‘We’ve been under restriction since July. You do know about that, don’t you?’

“It did seem that he didn’t know about that. He wasn’t aware that we’ve been struggling all of that time.”

Burnham said there was a wider “London-centricity in decision making”, which meant lockdown restrictions were lifted in May 2020 when the north of England was still near the peak of the first virus wave, a few weeks behind the south.

“I think because of that, Greater Manchester was left stuck with a high case rate for the rest of 2020,” he said.

Burnham said he repeatedly sought to attend meetings of the government’s Cobra emergency committee, and there was a lack of any forum for mayors such as him to keep ministers in Westminster updated about what their regions faced.

“That, I think, led to a situation where there just wasn’t an understanding of what some of the things the government was doing, what impact they were having on people’s lives,” he said.

Burnham’s decision in autumn 2020 to speak out loudly against what he saw as a lack of proper financial support for the tier 3 designation meant Greater Manchester faced a “punishment beating”, he told the inquiry.

Minutes from a meeting of a key central government committee on Covid planning said neighbouring Lancashire “should have a lighter set of measures imposed than Greater Manchester since they had shown a greater willingness to cooperate”, Burnham said.

He said: “Because we stood up for people in our city region who would otherwise have really struggled had they gone into that lockdown without the funds to help them, because we took that stand, they decided to make an example of us.”

He quoted from a written statement submitted by Hancock to the inquiry: “He says in his evidence about tier 3: ‘I was in despair that we had announced a policy that we knew would not work.’”

Burnham said: “It makes me angry on behalf of the people of Greater Manchester that they … imposed a policy that they had been advised by Sage [the government’s scientific advice committee] and others would not work.”