Jonathan Van-Tam 'first heard about Eat Out to Help Out on TV' as scientists dispute PM's claims

Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam has revealed that he first heard about Rishi Sunak's Eat Out to Help Out scheme on television. England’s former deputy chief medical officer criticised the scheme, saying it “didn’t feel sensible", as he gave evidence to the UK's official Covid-19 inquiry on Wednesday.

The inquiry has heard that the country’s top scientists, who were advising ministers during the pandemic, were never told about the plans to get people back into restaurants after the first lockdown, despite Mr Sunak, who was chancellor at the time, and then PM Boris Johnson saying they were consulted.

In potentially damaging testimony, England’s chief medical officer Sir Chris Whitty said he and Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s former chief scientific adviser, were never told about the plan, adding: “I think we should have been.” Meanwhile, Sir Jonathan, who stepped down from his position in March 2022, told the inquiry he was "absolutely not" consulted on the scheme.

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In his evidence today the scientist told the inquiry: “The first I heard about it was on TV." When asked what view he would have taken had he been consulted, Sir Jonathan said: “Had I been consulted I wouldn’t have made any distinction between Eat Out to Help Out and any other epidemiological event that brought different households into close contact with each other for the purposes of socialising, eating and consuming alcohol. But I would have said ‘this is exactly encouraging what we’ve been trying to suppress and get on top of in the last few months’. So it didn’t feel sensible