Spotlight: An insight into the hissing, backbiting and forked tongues at Cobra meetings

Hancock: Welcome, once again to this Cobra meeting on Covid-19. Before we get started, apologies for absences. The Prime Minister has sent his, again – Michael, stop grinning – and as far as I know we haven’t had one from Nicola Sturgeon. But let’s proceed.

Jacob Rees-Mogg: Sorry to interrupt Matt, but is this strictly necessary so soon after the first? Is it so urgent? Surely not if Boris isn’t here. Is he Chevening?

Dominic Raab (smiling): That’s a new name for it, Jacob!

Hancock: Please. Can we move on? I understand that Boris is with Carrie at Chevening but he is being kept fully informed and I have talked to him in advance. Thank you. So, first off, I want to start with an apology. At the last meeting I may have given the impression that there was nothing unduly to worry about with this virus ...

Michael Gove: Low risk, you said, Matt. And to the press afterwards.

Hancock: Well, take this as a mea culpa, Michael. I was wrong. This virus isn’t just a Chinese one either, it’s spreading to other countries rapidly. On January 30 the World Health Organisation declared Covid an international epidemic – stop shaking your head Jacob, we all know the contempt you hold the WHO in – but medical opinion is united that this could be a global catastrophe. Chris Whitty, our chief health boffin, confirms it. He and I are planning to hold a press conference later about it, with this committee’s approval, of course.

All right, moving on, there’s been the first death outside China, a man in the Philippines. There will be more. And because we know that this new virus is able to spread during its incubation period and before any symptoms appear, unlike a normal flu, it makes it that much harder to contain. So here’s step one. We ban any foreigner coming from or via China immediately. New Zealand has already done it … Yes, Rishi?

Rishi Sunak: Well, the ERG will certainly like that … but do you appreciate how much trade we do and are trying to do with China? This is particularly important, given our imminent exit from the EU.

Hancock: I do, Rishi, but you can’t measure lives in pounds and pennies.

Gove: This smacks of alarmism to me, Matt. With just a whiff of the stench of statism. Are we really going to follow Labour Kiwis? They don’t have as vital and widespread an economy as we do and they’re a lot closer to China. And, as Rishi pointed out, we’re trying to develop our markets with them. We just can’t cut them off. Have you even considered how much doing this will cost and the damage it might do in our future relations with China?

Hancock: This is a temporary measure, Michael, a short, sharp shock sure, but, if even the least of the predictions come to pass about the severity of this infection, it will save countless lives. And do any of you want to carry the responsibility of doing nothing? (Muttering in the room.) It’s vital we do this now because this is becoming a pandemic. The Chinese Lunar New Year is just over and millions of Chinese left Wuhan province and travelled, not just all over China but all over the world. So you can see the urgency. We have to do it. And, because there are no obvious symptoms, any Brit coming back from China or via China will have to quarantine for 14 days and that will have to be supervised. (Grumbling and shuffling of papers in the room.) By the police and, or, the military if necessary. We can use military camps if we have to, or requisition hotel rooms.

Rees-Mogg: Why don’t we just make them all wear ankle bracelets, electronic tags, with a built-in electric shocker if they stray from the house? You did mention a short, sharp shock after all. And CCTV in the bedrooms, what about that?

Hancock: There’s no need to be facetious, Jacob. I feel a heavy responsibility and I’m only advocating what is a proper medical and scientific response.

Gove: I know that aviation is a reserved matter so Scotland can’t opt out of anything. But how can you ensure that Sturgeon will go along with this?

Hancock: Well, I’m sure that she will see the sense of this and co-operate. If not, then we’ll simply order the airports in Scotland to close. With the military if necessary.

Sunak: These are unwarranted and unacceptable infringements on personal liberty chair, never mind the economic havoc.

Hancock: Covid is the ultimate, and perhaps permanent, infringement of personal liberty but we have to go further, we have to trace everyone who’s come in from China or via China in the last two weeks. And we have to test them. The PCR test, the polymerase chain reaction, we know works and can detect the virus in people who are asymptomatic.

I don’t pretend to know the science behind it but, basically, the test detects the genetic information of the virus, the RNA, even if the person tested doesn’t have symptoms.

We need to massively scale up the production of these tests and I’ve put in orders for up to 50 million kits to Roche and other suppliers, but obviously these will take time to come through. In the longer term, Oxford University, and a range of companies, are working on producing a vaccine, as the Chinese and Russians are, too.

Oxford are very confident that it will work and that the first batches could be ready by the end of the year, which is a remarkable reduction in the normal time-frame in trialling and certifying a vaccine.

I have put in a preliminary order for 50 million doses.

Sunak: Have you got any idea how much this is going to cost Matt, because I haven’t, but I’d take a stab at many, many millions ... billions, in fact. Where’s that going to come from? A new Covid tax? The magic money tree?

Hancock: Borrowing, Rishi – however it looks politically. Money is virtually interest-free now, isn’t it? With quantitative easing, as you call it. Printing money and getting the Bank of England to buy it. I’m not an economist but I understand at least that much.

The NHS, our GPs, our health boards and institutions are key to all of this. Between them they have the medical records, the contacts and the wherewithal to reach out and deliver to every man, woman and child in the country. If we direct them and if we provide the wherewithal. All of our resources need to be directed at closing down the infection before it kills tens of thousands of people.

Rees-Mogg: I can’t work out if this a leadership bid or a suicide one.

Hancock: Oh, and I haven’t mentioned PPE, protective equipment for frontline staff and care home workers. I’ve cancelled the consignment that was going to China and reassigned it for use here. I’ve ordered more too. Old people and those with pre-existing health conditions need to be shielded, we can’t have the infection passed on to the most vulnerable.

Gove: Have you had some kind of infection? Have you picked up a strain of socialism somewhere, hmm? You know this will never get through the Cabinet. We can’t be throwing tens of millions of pounds at this passing illness. It’s no more serious than flu.

Sunak: Echoing Michael, the country cannot afford this. Chris Whitty, if he was here, would say that this Covid thing is like any other infection – we build up a resistance, we become immune. And then it dies away. Has Boris gone along with this nonsense?

Raab: Rishi, we know that Boris suffers from cushion syndrome – bearing the impression of the last person who sat on him.

Hancock: This virus is not swine flu, it’s not even Sars. I’ve seen all the medical evidence, challenged, reviewed it, and it is not just overwhelming but unassailable. I don’t exaggerate, it is the greatest challenge to us since the Second World War. It’s not a question of losing and speaking German, it’s about losing everything – parents, children, the future. Alongside that, the economic cost is trivial. I see the shakes of heads and the smiles to yourselves and each other. This isn’t negotiable. You sign up to these measures or I go outside now and tell the cameras that I resign and that those left inside here are wilfully guilty of every Covid death, every hospitalisation to come.