Health Minister Simeon Brown says the COVID 19 Royal Commission of Inquiry has confirmed the previous Labour Government kept New Zealand in lockdown longer than necessary and ignored key advice during the pandemic.

Speaking to Newstalk ZB, Brown said the report raised serious questions about decisions made by ministers at the time.

“Firstly, I think it showed that the previous government did lock us down for longer than was necessary,” Brown said.

“It also highlighted that they spent too much and they continued spending on many things which weren’t related to the pandemic and that we’re still facing those consequences today.”

Brown said the report found Auckland’s lockdown lasted longer than officials had recommended.

“The Cabinet paper that went up and what the Royal Commission found was that the option put to Cabinet was to lock down Auckland for one week less than what was decided,” Brown said.

“What happened was a different decision came out of that.”

Brown said the former COVID 19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins had repeatedly said decisions were based on health advice.

“The reality is Chris Hipkins said during the time that he was making these decisions based on health advice and he should have been transparent where he was not,” Brown said.

“That’s an issue which the Royal Commission has now shone a light on.”

Brown said the inquiry also found the Auckland border restrictions during the summer of 2021 and 2022 lasted longer than necessary.

“The restriction around Auckland, the border restriction around Auckland for 32 days over the summer of 21-22, ultimately that was not needed,” Brown said.

“The officials made it very clear vaccination rates were high across the country. There was no need to put checks in place around the Auckland area for people leaving or coming in.”

Brown said the testing regime was also placed under unnecessary pressure.

“The advice was clear from the ministry that if that was in place they would put a huge burden on the testing regime,” Brown said.

“We’ve got to remember that was before the government let us actually use those RAT tests, which we all now use.”

Brown said the inquiry also raised serious concerns about how advice relating to vaccine mandates for young people was handled.

“The technical advisory group provided advice to the ministry saying actually children didn’t need two jabs for 12 to 17 year olds. One was actually enough,” Brown said.

“If they had a second one it started increasing the risk of myocarditis, so quite a serious issue.”

Brown said the Royal Commission found that advice was not clearly passed on to ministers.

However, he said a briefing provided to then COVID 19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins in December 2021 had raised concerns about vaccine mandates for younger people.

“That advice raised concerns about vaccine mandates requiring younger age groups, for example those under 18 years, to be fully vaccinated,” Brown said.

“Consideration should be given to permitting younger people who’ve had one dose to be permitted to work or undertake other activities covered by the mandate.”

Brown said ministers should have asked further questions once those concerns were raised.

“If the Minister of COVID 19, Chris Hipkins, when he saw that, should have started asking questions to get further information,” Brown said.

“It’s not good enough just to say we didn’t receive something. He was given something and his job was then to ask questions and delve into something which did raise quite a serious safety risk for those children.”