“We shouldn’t have empowered the scientists in the way we did,” he said. “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, for example.”
He said that in one meeting he attempted to raise his misgivings about closing down schools, adding: “I was very emotional about it. I was like: ‘Forget about the economy. Surely we can all agree that kids not being in school is a major nightmare,’ or something like that.
“There was a big silence afterwards. It was the first time someone had said it. I was so furious.”
The self-described “underdog” in the race to become the next prime minister explained how the minutes from Sage meetings were edited so that dissenting voices were not included in the final draft.
“The Sage people didn’t realise for a very long time that there was a Treasury person on all their calls. A lovely lady. She was great because it meant that she was sitting there, listening to their discussions,” he said.
He said the Treasury official was able to brief him on what was said in the meetings but omitted from the minutes, including disagreements with a conclusion or why people were not sure about it.
Mr Sunak recalled the moment when Prof Neil Ferguson and his team at Imperial College London presented their Report 9, which claimed Covid casualties could reach 500,000 if no action was taken but would be reduced to 20,000 with a lockdown.
But he said any discussions about the cost of imposing such draconian measures on society were suppressed.
Mr Sunak said he also regretted the fear messaging that his officials believed at the time could have long-lasting effects.
“In every brief, we tried to say: ‘Lets stop the fear’ narrative,” he said. “It was always wrong from the beginning. I constantly said it was wrong.”
He revealed that the closest he came to defying the Government’s messaging was a speech he gave in September 2020 in which he said it was time to learn to “live without fear”.
He said he had chosen to use this phrase as a direct response to the Cabinet Office approach, adding: “They were very upset about that.”
