Former health secretary Matt Hancock has denied claims the government’s attempt to throw a protective ring around care homes in 2020, early in the Covid pandemic, was empty rhetoric.In an irritable exchange he urged the Covid Inquiry to focus on the substance of what the government was doing at the time.Mr Hancock said the decision to discharge patients from hospitals into care homes when testing was not available, was “the least worst solution”.Nicola Brook, a lawyer representing bereaved families called his comments “an insult to the memory of each and every person who died”.Mr Hancock was responsible for care services in England where more than 43,000 people died with Covid between March 2020 and January 2022, many of them in the early weeks of the pandemic.On Monday, the lawyer representing a bereaved families group quoted a civil servant who said the high number of deaths in care homes amounted to “generational slaughter”.Responding to questions from the barrister to the inquiry Jacqueline Carey KC, Mr Hancock said: “You know there may be campaign groups and politically-motivated bodies that say other things.”What I care about though is the substance, and frankly that’s what this inquiry should care about after all the millions of pounds that have been spent on it.”Inquiry chair Lady Hallett, responded: “And I can assure you, Mr Hancock, it is what I care about.”The current section of the Covid inquiry is likely to be “emotive and distressing”, Ms Carey has warned.Questioned by Ms Carey, Mr Hancock acknowledged the discharge policy was an “incredibly con …