Sunak cancelling meeting after Greek PM’s Parthenon marbles comments ‘wasn’t a snub’, minister claims – UK politics live | Politics

Gove breaks away from the line of questioning to issue an apology.

I want to take this opportunity, if I may, to apologise to the victims who endured so much pain, the families who’ve endured so much loss, as a result of the mistakes that were made by government in response to the pandemic.

And as a minister, responsible for the Cabinet Office, and who was also close to many of the decisions that were made, I must take my share of responsibility for that.

Politicians are human beings, we’re fallible, we make mistakes and we make errors. And I’m sure that the inquiry will have an opportunity to look in detail at many of the errors I and others made.

But he also says he and his colleagues were trying to take the best decisions “in circumstances where every decision was difficult and every course was bad”.

Keith says the inquiry has heard from several witnesses who have described the Cabinet Office as dysfunctional during Covid.

Q: How did that happen?

Gove says the structure of the Cabinet Office was flawed. Normally a cabinet minister is responsible for what their department does. But that is not the case at the Cabinet Office, he says. Significant parts answer either to the cabinet secretary or to the PM, and not to the lead departmental minister, he says.

Q: So to whom should the inquiry look for accountability as to the state the Cabinet Office was in?

Gove says for many years the Cabinet Office has operated in a way which is “not as effective as it should be”, both in relation to delivering normal government services and and to responding to emergencies.

He says the Cabinet Office ceded too much responsibility to lead government departments, and did not take enough responsibility at the centre.

He also says past prime ministers have given the Cabinet Office responsibility for things that did not fit elsewhere, like drugs policy. He says it became a “Mary Poppins bag” into which PMs will shove things that need to be dealt with by the government’s nanny.

He says, when he became responsible for the Cabinet Office in early 2020, he called for changes to the way it operated.

He says he is not blaming the civil servants, some of whom were among the best. The problem was that it had been given too much to do, and that there was no strategic thinking about how the centre of government should be reconfigured.

Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary and former Cabinet Office minister, has just started giving evidence to the Covid inquiry.

He is being questioned by Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel for the inquiry.

The feed is here:

Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Greek PM, declined a meeting with the UK deputy prime minster, Oliver Dowden, after it was offered in place of one with Rishi Sunak, Ben Quinn reports.

Good morning. Rishi Sunak does not have all the qualities of a great human being but, among other virtues, he is generally calm and polite, and that makes his row with the Greek PM about the Parthenon marbles even harder to comprehend than it otherwise would be.

The official explanation is that Sunak cancelled his meeting with Kyriakos Mitsotakis because Mitsotakis went back on a promise not to raise the issue of the sculptures during his three-day visit to the UK. But did anyone in No 10 seriously think that Mitsotakis would be able to get through media interviews without being asked about the subject?

And so if the pretext for cancelling the meeting was flaky, was this all just some political ruse to present Sunak in a positive light ahead of the election. (One of the problems with political commentary at this stage of the political cycle is that it is assumed that everything is motivated by calculations about electoral positioning. Roughly 80% of the time that’s true, but sometimes it isn’t.)

Some of the briefing from the Tory side backs up this analysis. Keir Starmer met Mitsotakis yesterday and Labour is not opposed to the marbles going back to Greece on loan, and in her London Playbook briefing Rosa Prince quotes a Conservative source as saying:

Starmer sold out to secure a meeting. It’s naive on his part and shows how little regard he has for British taxpayers who have looked after these for generations. Starmer is up to his old tricks of just telling the person in front of him what they want to hear.

Given that polling suggests two-thirds of Britons would support the sculptures going back to Greece as part of a deal that would see Greek artefacts being loaned to British museums in exchange, it is hard to see Sunak’s move as a great vote-winner. But James Johnson, a pollster who used to work in No 10 for Theresa May, says it is not obviously a mistake. He posted this on X last night.

Perhaps the worst take on this whole affair came this morning from Mark Harper, the transport secretary. In an interview on Sky News this morning, he claimed that Sunak’s decision to cancel the meeting was not a snub. Asked if it was a snub, he replied:

The prime minister wasn’t able to meet the Greek prime minister. He was offered a meeting with the deputy prime minister, which proved not to be possible for him to take up. So, I don’t think I’d characterise it the way you have.

Discussions continue between our governments about important matters.

Here is Helena Smith’s story about the row.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.

10am: Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary and Cabinet Office minister during the pandemic, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry.

Morning: David Cameron, the new foreign secretary, attends a meeting of Nato foreign ministers in Brussels.

10.15am: Richard Hughes, chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, and colleagues give evidence to the Commons Treasury committee about the autumn statement.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

After 12.30pm: MPs debate the second reading of the criminal justice bill.

Afternoon: Prof Dame Jenny Harries, the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry.

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