Rishie Sunak's hugely controversial eat-out-to-help-out scheme was introduced to save Britain's economy. But the then-chancellors move, encouraging people to leave their homes during a pandemic, and most likely driving the surge in infections was never put to the country's chief scientific advisor.

The whole truth, nothing but the truth. I think it would have been very obvious to anyone that this was likely to cause, and inevitably would cause, an increase in transmission risk.

Sir Patrick was tasked with leading the country's scientific response to the health crisis.

Next slide, please.

But he was faced with a Prime Minister who struggled with the data and who himself could not follow the science. Sir Patrick kept a diary at the time. In it, he says, Five hours of meetings with the PM looked broken, head in hands a lot. He then quotes Boris Johnson as saying, Is it because of the great British libertarian nation we are that it spread so much? Maybe we are licked as a species. We are too to get our act together.

The message that we get from these repeated entries appears to describe something, at least as far as the Prime Minister is concerned, more serious, a repeated failure to understand graphs, scientific concepts, and so on.

Well, I think I'm right in saying that the Prime Minister at the time gave up science when he was 15, and I think he'd be the first to admit it wasn't his forte.

Sir Patrick told the inquiry that as it became obvious the virus was spreading faster than previously feared, he found himself increasingly isolated and left out of key decision making meetings. He wrote, PM meeting begins to argue for letting it, COVID, all rip, saying yes, there will be more casualties, but so be it, they've had a good innings. Dc, that's Dominic Cummings, says, Rishie thinks just let people die and that's okay. This all feels like a complete lack of leadership. He goes on to say, The right-wing press are culpable and we have a week in decisive PM. The start of the pandemic was clearly a very difficult time for Sir Patrick Vallance, faced with government leaders who were pushing back against imposing restrictions too quickly. But even later on, ahead of the next lockdown, Sir Patrick Vallance was faced with a Prime Minister who wanted to let the virus run through the general population. Sir Patrick's testimony chimes with earlier evidence presented to the inquiry that describes the chaos and ineffective leadership at the heart of government. But perhaps as the government's chief scientific advisor during a pandemic, it is all the more damning. Arshish Joshi at The COVID Inquiry.