British leader backs official Covid inquiry after criticism

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has defended the official coronavirus inquiry as the "right way" to scrutinise the handling of the pandemic after the extraordinary leak of former health minister Matt Hancock's messages.

The Prime Minister urged people not to focus on "piecemeal bits of information" after a trove of more than 100,000 WhatsApp messages were handed to the Daily Telegraph.

Mr Hancock was considering legal action while fighting claims he rejected advice to give coronavirus tests to all residents going into English care homes while health secretary.

His spokesman said a report claiming he rejected clinical advice on care home testing was "flat wrong" because he was told it was "not currently possible" to carry out the tests.

The aide alleged the messages leaked by journalist Isabel Oakeshott, who was handed them by Mr Hancock while she worked on his Pandemic Diaries memoir, have been "spun to fit an anti-lockdown agenda".

At Prime Minister's Questions, Sir Keir Starmer called for Mr Sunak to ensure the inquiry had all the support it needed "to report by the end of this year".

The Labour leader added: "Families across the country will look at this, and the sight of politicians writing books portraying them as heroes will be an insulting and ghoulish spectacle for them."

Mr Sunak responded: "Rather than comment on piecemeal bits of information, I'm sure the honourable gentleman will agree with me the right way for these things to be looked at is the Covid inquiry.

"There is a proper process to these things, it is an independent inquiry, it has the resources it needs, it has the powers it needs and what we should do in this House is to let them get on and do their job."