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.”

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Source: The Guardian (24 August 2022)