George Osborne ‘completely rejects’ claims austerity weakened health care before pandemic – video

Giving evidence to the Covid Inquiry, the former UK chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, has rejected claims that austerity had a negative impact on the UK’s ability to cope with the pandemic, arguing that without austerity the public health crisis could have created a fiscal crisis. Osborne told the inquiry that ‘Britain had a huge economic crash … it would have been worse, in my view and the view of many people, including the governor of the Bank of England at the time, Mervyn King, had we not also tried to address the risk to the public finances’