Mayor Andy Burnham says "all hell broke loose" when Covid Tiers were introduced
He's been giving evidence to the Covid inquiry
Andy Burnham "repeatedly" asked to attend Cobra meetings but was not invited to a single one, he has told the Covid Inquiry.
The Greater Manchester mayor said he and Liverpool City Region mayor Steve Rotheram had a "worry" that "there was a London-centricity in decision making" and they "wanted to create the balance in people's thinking by saying 'look, this is how it seems from here'.
"And genuinely, it was in the spirit of national emergency.
"We weren't there to use it as a platform for politics or anything like that, it was simply to say 'we are worried, this is a challenging situation, we want to be heard and taken as seriously as anywhere else'."
Without access to Cobra - Government-led meetings which co-ordinate and discuss the response to significant events with key agencies - issues raised by metro mayors "had nowhere to go", Mr Burnham added.
He said: "We raised them in the media because we had no alternative. If Cobra had been properly structured, we would have been able to put these issues on the agenda, have proper response to them, but we were never afforded that opportunity."
Mr Burnham also said London-centric decision-making "stuck" Greater Manchester with a higher Covid-19 case rate for the whole of 2020.
He said the first national lockdown was lifted "too early" for Manchester, which was closer to its peak than London was at the time, and said he would have argued against the decision if he had been consulted.
He said: "I think they were looking more at the picture in London and they were more concerned with that than where we were.
"There was pressure to lift it from voices here and I think the decision was more influenced by that than what we were seeing."
Blaming "London-centricity", he added: "I think because of that, Greater Manchester was left stuck with a high case rate for the rest of 2020."
The Mayor said he was "astonished" by the Government's "massively centralised" response to the pandemic.
The Greater Manchester mayor told the Covid-19 Inquiry the decision to stand down local testing was an example of the region not being consulted by ministers on major decisions in March 2020.
Mr Burnham said: "You had a mature system like Greater Manchester that was simply bypassed.
"The kind of thing that sticks in my mind from the period we're talking about is genuine astonishment.
"I could not even get my head around why local testing teams... would be stood down."
The Government then decided to set up a testing facility at Manchester Airport without consultation.
But Mr Burnham said many people in the region could not afford the costs of travelling to the facility south of Manchester.
He added: "That was not understood it would seem, but they did not ask us.
"Fancy opening a testing station in Greater Manchester without consulting us on the location?"
All hell broke loose:
The announcement of local restrictions for Greater Manchester meant "all hell broke loose", Andy Burnham said.
Mr Burnham said the then-health secretary, Matt Hancock, had given him only an hour's notice to discuss the imposition of local restrictions with local leaders.
Saying the situation was "as chaotic as it gets", he said: "What I remember is about 8 o'clock that night, the health secretary gave a very cursory announcement to a TV camera in 4 Millbank that we would be going under these restrictions and then all hell broke loose."
Mr Burnham said he was "inundated" with questions about whether residents could go to work, and had no "UK Government frequently asked questions" to provide answers for them.
But he said Matt Hancock was "more sympathetic" than other ministers to providing financial support for businesses and workers during the pandemic.
The Greater Manchester mayor told the Covid-19 Inquiry he had repeatedly called for support measures to address hardship in poorer areas such as Bolton during tiered restrictions.
When asked how Mr Hancock responded to a direct request for support, Mr Burnham said: "To be fair he was more sympathetic actually than other ministers that I spoke to about the matter."
He added: "We had spent pretty much the best part of a year by now saying, 'look what is happening here, help us'.
"We felt like we were shouting into the abyss."
Matt Hancock "knew Tier 3 restrictions would not work"
Quoting from written evidence submitted by the former health secretary, Mr Burnham said: "He says in his evidence about Tier 3, 'I was in despair that we had announced a policy that we knew would not work'."
Mr Burnham said: "It makes me angry on behalf of the people of Greater Manchester that they say in that room and they imposed a policy that they had been advised by Sage and others would not work."
He also accused the Government of discussing a "punishment beating for Greater Manchester"
This followed, Mr Burnham said, an argument over financial support for people unable to work during the pandemic.
The Greater Manchester mayor read from a minute of a meeting of the Government's "Covid-O" committee that said: "Lancashire should have a lighter set of measures imposed than Greater Manchester since they had shown a greater willingness to co-operate.
"Tougher measures should be imposed on Greater Manchester that day."
Mr Burnham added: "Because we stood up for people in our city region who would otherwise have really struggled had they gone into that lockdown without the funds to help them, because we took that stand they decided to make an example of us.
"It's unbelievable for me now to look at evidence saying they knew it didn't work, they knew Tier 3 didn't work.
"They knew that, but they were still going to impose it on us without enough financial support."
Boris Johnson was not aware of the restrictions imposed in Greater Manchester:
During a telephone conversation that took place in October 2020, on the eve of Tier 3 restrictions being introduced in the region, Mr Burnham said the former PM appeared unaware of the new rules being imposed.
The Greater Manchester mayor added: "(Boris Johnson) was saying 'we just need you to agree to these Tier 3 restrictions and (financial) packages'. I said 'we can't, it is not enough'.
"He said 'what do you mean?' I said 'we have been under restrictions since July. You do know about that, don't you?'
"To me, it didn't seem that he did know about that. He wasn't aware that we have been struggling all that time."
Mr Burnham added the Government did not understand the impact its decisions were "having on people's lives", as he called on the committee to recommend "a more devolved infrastructure" in the event of future pandemics.