NHS cancellations during Covid were 'least bad' option, insists Hancock

Cancelling non-urgent treatment of patients during the pandemic was the "least bad" of a series of "awful options", Matt Hancock admitted yesterday.

- Anna Bawden

In his third and at times combative appearance at the Covid-19 inquiry, in which he repeatedly interrupted the inquiry counsel, Jacqueline Carey, the former health secretary defended his decision to allow the NHS to postpone routine treatment and care from April 2020.

Asked if he thought it was the right decision, Hancock said: "Well, obviously reluctantly, but you're faced with a series of awful options - that was the least bad." He said the "overall point is that we did not have a collapse in the system".

But Heather Hallett, who is chairing the inquiry, questioned Hancock's assertion that the NHS was available to all in the pandemic according to need, pointing out that patients requiring cancer screening, a hip replacement or other surgery could not access the care that they needed.

Hancock insisted that the NHS had not been "overwhelmed" and that it had been "better to delay some non-urgent operations" in order to protect the health service and the patients themselves because people were "more likely to catch Covid in a hospital than in almost any other setting".