Matt Hancock hits back as Government adviser says UK locked down too late and delay 'cost a lot of lives'

The UK should have gone into lockdown earlier and the delay in implementing it "cost a lot of lives", an infectious diseases expert has said.

Professor John Edmunds, who attends meetings of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), insisted lives would have been saved had ministers acted sooner.

But Health Secretary Matt Hancock hit back at Prof Edmunds' comments, insisting the Government made the "right decisions at the right time" over coronavirus.

Prof Edmunds told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show: “We should have gone into lockdown earlier.

"I think it would have been hard to do it, I think the data that we were dealing with in the early part of March and our kind of situational awareness was really quite poor.

“And so I think it would have been very hard to pull the trigger at that point but I wish we had – I wish we had gone into lockdown earlier. I think that has cost a lot of lives unfortunately.”

Appearing on the show later on Sunday morning, Mr Hancock said he did not believe the UK should have gone into lockdown sooner.

He said: “I think we took the right decisions at the right time and there’s a broad range on Sage of scientific opinion and we were guided by the science which means guided by the balance of that opinion – as expressed to ministers through the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser. That’s the right way for it to have been done.”

Mr Hancock said other scientists made “different scientific arguments”.

Asked if he was sure that locking down when they did had not cost lives, he said: “I am sure, as I keep looking back on that period, I’m sure that taking into account everything we knew at that moment – my view is that we made the right decisions at the right time.”

Meanwhile, Prof Edmunds said the epidemic “is definitely not all over” – warning there is an “awful long way to go”.

“If we do relax our guard this epidemic will come back very fast.”

The comments come as Boris Johnson has been accused of mishandling the coronavirus crisis as more than 40,000 people have paid with their lives in the UK.

Pressure is growing among MPs for a public inquiry in autumn so lessons can be learned as we head into 2021 still battling the virus.

The coronavirus death toll in the UK, including in hospitals, care homes and the community, has risen by 204 to 40,465, according to the Department of Health.

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