![]() ![]() How information was communicated by key players, and how that impacted decision-making, is what's behind this line of questioning.Īs part of the evidence, a WhatsApp exchange between Cabinet Secretary Simon Case and Martin Reynolds has been made public. This focus on how messages were sent and recorded is significant because the inquiry is examining how government dealt with the pandemic internally. "Not all of those discussions are recorded in full, even in the main meetings himself," he said. He suggested that these conversations may be more akin to "ephemeral discussions", that civil servants may have in corridors or the phone. The questions put to Mr Reynolds have focused on how relevant these Whatsapps were to the decision-making process and whether they constitute the type of communication that require formal notation. my experience was that WhatsApp became more extensive in its usage". He said there was "a significant shift in the volume of WhatsApps used for discussions reflecting the shift to remote working and the pace of some of the activities going on with people in different locations. ![]() He agrees that with the "benefit of hindsight", things could have been done differently in this period.īy Gurpreet Narwan, political correspondentĪ key part of this evidence session so far has been Martin Reynolds being asked about the shift to WhatsApp messaging during the pandemic and the policies around it. The former civil servant says it is now clear that the UK should have been "assessing the situation and moving more quickly". However, Mr Reynolds says Mr Johnson's approach to COVID was "instinctively optimistic", as he believed that "as a leader it is important to project confidence and ability to deal with things". The thought was that "plans and preparations" were in place, he said. was very much that the system was tracking this carefully, the right processes were in place to manage that". Martin Reynolds said that throughout this period, there were "clearly reports coming in identifying some of the risks and challenges around COVID, the tone of those communications. Mr Keith queries whether the mood was that there was "not too much to see" when it came to COVID. The conversation then turns to the mood within Downing Street in February and March of 2020 - as the pandemic began.īarrister Hugo Keith KC asks if there is any basis to a claim by Dominic Cummings that there was an "untoward degree of optimism bias on the part of the prime minister, a sense of the worst is not going to happen". He says there was an "unusual dynamic around Mr Cummings - "in many ways, he was the post empowered chief of staff Downing Street had seen", Mr Reynolds says, but that Mr Johnson did not rely solely on his advice and that the pair often were not working in tandem. He adds that there was a sense of "unease" about some of the messaging and actions taking place, citing Mr Cummings' call for "weirdos and misfits" to join Number 10 and the so-called "s**t list" of people who were thought to be "at risk in more muscular approach to civil service". He goes on to say that the relationship between Mr Johnson and Dominic Cummings, his chief of staff, created a "slightly divergent internal politics". ![]() He says that previously, the focus had been on Brexit and the negotiations and that there was a "significant turning of the page.there was a sense that the government had a five or ten year time horizon to look at". Mr Reynolds says the "dynamics" of January/February 2020 was "very different" to before the election. Mr Reynolds is now asked about whether the Boris's Johnson's administration was able to cope with the onset of the COVID crisis in 2020 given an election had only happened months before. ![]()
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