London-centric approach kept Covid cases high in Manchester - Andy Burnham - BBC News
Andy Burnham says the first lockdown was lifted "too early" for Manchester, which kept cases higher for the rest of 2020.
Pete Weatherby KC now questions Rotheram on behalf of the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice group.

He asks the Liverpool mayor a question around the Atletico Madrid-Liverpool match, which was held on the same day the WHO director declared Covid to be a pandemic and called for urgent action internationally to combat its spread.

The match was attended by more than 50,000 people, Weatherby says, including about 3,000 people from Madrid - although Spain already had high case numbers.

Rotheram is asked: "In terms of the match going ahead, were you consulted by ministers or government officials about the decision?

"At no stage were we consulted by anybody," Rotheram says.

"Quite the opposite: we were trying to get information but at that stage the government said the fixture was low-risk."

Asked whether he thought at the time that the match should have gone ahead, Rotheram says: "We had no scientific evidence to support that we were concerned about it, but had the goverment said it should not go ahead, I think everyone would have breathed a sigh of relief."

Today's session of the Covid Inquiry has now ended. It will resume tomorrow, when it will focus on decision making and political governance during the pandemic.