Baroness Dido Harding, the former head of Test and Trace, told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry Sunak ‘didn't want to create an additional welfare benefit'.

Baroness Harding, who was appointed in May 2020, said people had not come forward for testing ‘because they were afraid of the consequences of needing to isolate, both financial and non-financial'.

When asked if she held any responsibility for getting isolation support, she said: ‘Well, it's certainly the thing that I wish I had succeeded in persuading ministers to do. We had the money in the budget, you know, we didn't spend all of our budget, and I also think that spending more on self-isolation would have reduced the need for testing.

‘But I wasn't the decision maker. The decision maker in this was the chancellor and, at every opportunity from June onwards, the chancellor rejected the proposals and, in the end, that was not in my control.'

The former head of Test and Trace said the UK ‘spent proportionately much less than other developed countries' in supporting disadvantaged people to self-isolate, adding ‘if we had allocated more of the [NHS Test and Trace] budget to isolation support, I strongly suspect that fewer would have died, and infection rates would have been lower with all of the benefits that would have brought'.

Rishi Sunak has not been asked to give evidence during the Test, Trace and Isolate module of the inquiry.