Patrick Vallance has told the Covid-19 inquiry that in the first wave of the pandemic, Britain did not go “hard” enough with lockdown measures.

In his witness statement to the inquiry, he wrote: “The most important lesson that I learned and stated repeatedly from the first lockdown onwards, in respect to the timing of interventions, was that you had to go earlier than you would like, harder than you would like and broader than you would like.”

Explaining what he meant, Sir Patrick said: “As I mentioned, in the first wave I think we didn’t go early enough and there was a trickling of measures when I think we should have gone with more measures simultaneously.”

He added: “So my rider that it’s ‘than you would like to’ is very clear, and that is because the observation I made was that everyone’s instinct is to not to do any of these things.

“It’s to delay just a bit too much, it’s to argue that the measures shouldn’t be quite as strict at the moment – and we saw this very clearly during October, where every MP argued that their areas shouldn’t be in a higher tier, they should be in a lower tier.

“So, everyone’s arguing to do things just a little bit less than they should do.”