Sunak says it was a mistake to ‘empower scientists’ during Covid pandemic

Rishi Sunak has claimed that it was a mistake to “empower scientists” during the coronavirus pandemic and that his opposition to closing schools was met with silence during one meeting.

The Conservative leadership candidate believes one of the major errors was allowing the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) to have so much influence on decision making such as closing nurseries, schools and colleges in March 2020.

Sunak also disclosed that he was banned from discussing the “trade-offs” of imposing coronavirus-related restrictions such as missed doctor’s appointments and NHS waiting list backlogs.

In an interview with the Spectator to be published on Saturday, the former chancellor said: “We shouldn’t have empowered the scientists in the way we did. And you have to acknowledge trade-offs from the beginning.

“If we’d done all of that, we could be in a very different place. We’d probably have made different decisions on things like schools.”

Schools in the UK shut with the exception of those for looking after the children of keyworkers and vulnerable children. Some schools started to reopen in August 2020.

Sunak’s remarks came a few days after he praised British scientists and pledged to set up a multibillion-pound research programme if he became prime minister after the exclusion of British scientists from EU funding.

Related: Coronavirus UK: schools, colleges and nurseries to close

Sunak said during one meeting he tried to voice his opposition to closing schools, saying he got “very emotional about it”. The former chancellor added: “I was like: ‘Forget about the economy – surely we can all agree that kids not being in school is a major nightmare.’

“There was a big silence afterwards. It was the first time someone had said it. I was so furious.”

He said that minutes from Sage meetings were edited, which resulted in opposing opinions being omitted from the final draft. Sunak added: “Those meetings were literally me around that table, just fighting. It was incredibly uncomfortable every single time.”

Sunak said Sage advisers were unaware for “a very long time that there was a Treasury person on all their calls”.

He revealed that his Treasury official briefed him on what was said during the meetings and what was omitted by telling him “actually, it turns out that lots of people disagreed with that conclusion” or “here are the reasons that they were not sure about it”.