The lockdown of churches in the UK during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic was “outrageous”, a former Government minister has admitted.

Lord Greenhalgh of Fulham, a Conservative peer in Boris Johnson’s Government, said that churches and other places of worship were closed because “people at the heart of power did not understand faith”.

He made his remarks as the Covid Inquiry heard evidence from senior advisers and civil servants about the decisions taken during the pandemic.

They included Deputy Cabinet Secretary Helen MacNamara who told the inquiry that decision makers had suffered from a “narrow perspective”.

Lord Greenhalgh said that places of worship did a “phenomenal job” at controlling the spread of the virus compared to rates of transmission in other settings that were not subject to the same restrictions.