Watch live as Rishi Sunak gives evidence at the Covid-19 inquiry for a second day on Tuesday (16 December).
Mr Sunak served as chancellor between February 2020 and July 2022 and oversaw the government's economic response to the pandemic.
He presided over the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, a £850m policy which gave restaurant diners a state-funded £10-a-head discount. Scientists said it was "highly likely" to have increased Covid infections and deaths.
The former prime minister also introduced the coronavirus job retention (furlough) scheme, which saw the government provide grants to employers to cover 80 per cent of employees’ wages so they could stay at home but still be employed. Approximately 11.7 million employees were furloughed, at a cost of £70bn.
Speaking at the inquiry on Monday (15 December), Mr Sunak said that there was no “toolkit” on how to respond to the pandemic, so he therefore told his team that they “wouldn’t get it right straight away”.
He also recalled that the “medical and scientific community” were initially advising the government against moving “too early” as they stressed that Covid measures had to be “maintained for a period of time”.
It comes after an 800-page report into the pandemic response found that Boris Johnson oversaw a “toxic and chaotic” culture within the government and that his "expressions of over-optimism" about the impact of Covid undermined official health advice.
Baroness Heather Hallett, the chair of the inquiry, described the response to the pandemic as "too little, too late" and said Mr Johnson’s failure to take Covid seriously led to 23,000 deaths.
