In May 2016, Sir Chris became the most senior civil servant in the Department of Health and over the next eight years worked with no fewer than seven different secretaries of state from Conservative Jeremy Hunt through to Labour’s Wes Streeting.
In that role, he oversaw important policies and decisions made after Covid emerged. And also – crucially – in the years before the virus started spreading, when planning for a pandemic was meant to be taking place.
He has already given evidence on three separate occasions to the public inquiry into the government’s handling of the crisis.
Following one of his evidence sessions, one lawyer for the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice group accused him of providing “an object lesson in obfuscation, a word salad, so many, many words, so very little substance”.
In November 2023, the Covid inquiry published text messages he exchanged with his then-boss, Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill.
These were sent on 12 March 2020, less than two weeks before the country entered its first national lockdown.
In the messages, Lord Sedwill wrote: “Presumably like chickenpox we want people to get it and develop herd immunity before the next wave. We just want them not to get it all at once and preferably when it’s warm and dry.”
Sir Chris replied: “Exactly right. We make the point every meeting, they don’t quite get it.”
Around that time, the government was forced to deny it had a plan to develop so-called herd immunity by accepting that younger, fitter people would catch the virus.
Asked about this at the time, Sir Chris accepted he had been “very, very loose” in his language but was, in reality, following scientific advice.
