Rishi Sunak defended the Eat Out To Help Out scheme, saying the Covid-era meal deal had saved millions of jobs that would have otherwise have been lost.

The Prime Minister told the official Covid Inquiry that jobs held by vulnerable people in hospitality could have been devastated if he had not launched the scheme in the summer of 2020.

Sunak said: “My primary concern was protecting millions of jobs of particularly vulnerable people who worked in the industry.

“All the data, all the evidence, all the polling, all the input from those companies suggested that unless we did something many of those jobs would have been a risk with devastating consequences for those people and their families, and that’s why independent think tanks had recommended something like that.”

He added that he was right not to consult scientists or the Secretary of State for Health over the 2020 hospitality scheme.

The plan formed part Mr Sunak’s summer economic update on July 8 2020, and provided 50% off the cost of food and/or non-alcoholic drinks.

Previous witnesses to the inquiry, including Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, said they were blindsided by the £840m programme, which underwrote a customer discount of 50% in meals in pubs and restaurants.

Sir Chris referred to it as ‘Eat Out To Help Out the Virus’ because of its impact on the disease’s circulation.

The PM said the key scientific advisors were not consulted because scientists had already signed off the wider reopening of hospitality, and it was just a small part of that wider policy.

Sunak said that there had been a month between EOTHO being announced and it coming into effect, adding: “They (scientists) had ample opportunity to raise those concerns in forums where I was, or where the Prime Minister and others were, and they didn’t.’

He told the inquiry that those sectors of the economy that were worst effected - hospitality, leisure, tourism and retail – were “disproportionately employed people who were the most vulnerable in society”.

He said: “Those jobs, I think, as a matter of social justice, were particularly important to try and safeguard.

“Polling was clear - I can’t remember the exact polling firm but there was international polling that demonstrated there seemed to be, or there was, a much greater reticence for people in the UK to want to return back to all those activities even once things had been reopened.

“That would have genuine impact on people’s lives and their jobs, and everything else that we’d want to do as a country.”

Sir Patrick Vallance, who was chief scientific adviser, said he could not recall being consulted in advance about the scheme that cost hundreds of millions of pounds.

Giving evidence to Baroness Hallett’s inquiry, Sir Patrick said the scheme was “highly likely” to have fuelled deaths.

But Michael Gove, a government minister, defended the policy, saying it was announced a month before it was implemented and during this time it was “not the case that there was a public critique”.

“It was an effective way of ensuring that the hospitality industry was supported through a very difficult period, and it was entirely within the broad outlines of rules about social mixing that prevailed at the time,” he said.