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Lord Sedwill: 'Government did not have exact measures' for tackling Covid crisis

Lord Sedwill, who stood down as Cabinet Secretary last month - T Mughal/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock 
Lord Sedwill, who stood down as Cabinet Secretary last month - T Mughal/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Coronavirus Article Bar with counter
Coronavirus Article Bar with counter

The "Government machine" was not fully prepared for Covid-19 and was "exposed" by the scale of the crisis, a former Cabinet Secretary said as he claimed that Dominic Cummings had undermined compliance with the rules.

In comments that will reignite the debate about whether Boris Johnson was too slow to enter lockdown in March, Lord Sedwill said one of "two big questions" was whether decisions had been "taken at the right time".

In his first interview since stepping down as head of the civil service, he said the second bone of contention was over the Government's "capabilities" and whether the "right balance of investment" had been made in pandemic contingency planning.

While the UK had rehearsed other scenarios, such as pandemic influenza, Lord Sedwill told the BBC the Government had not prepared for the "exact measures" necessary for the "challenge Covid-19 presented".

"If it had been a different pandemic, by the way, the answer wouldn't have been a lockdown," he said. "I think there is a genuine question about whether we could have been better prepared in the first place and that is obviously a very legitimate challenge."

Asked whether Mr Cummings should have resigned amid a public outcry over his trip to County Durham during lockdown, he said he disagreed that people should quit "every time they make a mistake".

However, he acknowledged that it had been a "difficult moment for the Government" and had "clearly undermined" ministers’ efforts to get people to comply with social distancing rules.

Hitting out at hostile briefings against him and other senior mandarins by anonymous Government sources, Lord Sedwill reiterated that attacks on the civil service were damaging to "good governance".

But he played down suggestions of an orchestrated campaign, adding that it was not unusual for a number of permanent secretaries to step down during the first year of a new Parliament.

"Governments want people they have confidence in, of course," he said. "We go through periods of this kind when there's perceived to be an attack on the underlying values of the civil service, but actually, those values and the institutions serving governments with impartiality have always prevailed, and I'm confident they will continue to do so."

Pushing back against reports of a rift with Boris Johnson before his departure, he also claimed the job of leading the civil service was not one he had "ever really expected to do", adding that he would have left within one to two years anyway.

He added that Mr Johnson was a "good Prime Minister" who had a "very clear agenda", although his style was "different to his predecessors".

Turning to Nato, Lord Sedwill, who also served as national security adviser, took a veiled swipe at Donald Trump as he warned it was vital that the Western alliance was buttressed by "American leadership".

Asked whether it would be better for the UK if there was a different president in the White House, he said Mr Trump was a "very unusual occupant" due to his "personal style" and the way he "articulates the US position".

"But the underlying alliance is based on much more than the individual relationships at the top," he added. "Of course, when the institutions that particularly the UK has benefited from – because the multilateral system was one in which we had a major part in shaping in the first place and has suited our country's interest very well – it's obviously challenging when those institutions are either underused or there are challenges to them.

"We've been through these ups and downs over many years, and it's reasonable to expect that a superpower like the US is inevitably going to take a more unilateral position than countries like the UK who invest heavily in the multilateral system."