Boris Johnson believed old people should ‘accept their fate’ and get Covid, inquiry told

Boris Johnson agreed with Conservative MPs that Covid was “Nature’s way of dealing with old people” and that they should “accept their fate” to the virus, the inquiry into the pandemic has been told.

Diaries written by Sir Patrick Vallance, the then chief scientific adviser, reveal that Mr Johnson was resistant to a second lockdown, recording in August 2020 “he’s obsessed with older people accepting their fate and letting the young get on with life and the economy going”.

Sir Patrick wrote that it was “quite a bonkers set of exchanges”.

The diary entries were revealed during testimony from Lee Cain, who was Mr Johnson’s director of communications at the height of the pandemic.

After the initial lockdown in spring 2020, there was a debate at the heart of government in summer and autumn 2020 about whether there should be a second one in response to a further wave of Covid cases.

Sir Patrick wrote on 25 August 2020: “PM WhatsApp group kicks off because PM has read in FT that the IFR [infection fatality rate] is 0.04%. Age-related IFR explained and that overall looks more like 0.4% to 1%. He is obsessed with older people accepting their fate and letting the young get on with life and the economy going. Quite a bonkers set of exchanges”.

On 14 December 2020, following the second lockdown but as a new variant, Alpha, of Covid was emerging, Sir Patrick recorded in his diary: “PM told he has been acting early and the public are with him (but his party is not). He says his party ‘thinks the whole thing is pathetic and Covid is just Nature’s way of dealing with old people – and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them. A lot of moderate people think it is a bit too much’. Wants to rely on polling.”

The next day, the chief scientific adviser then records that Cabinet “agreed that things need to be scaled back. Christmas must be smaller shorter and local. Chief whip says ‘I think we should let the old people get it & protect others’. PM says ‘a lot of my backbenchers think that & I must say I agree with them’… He says ‘let’s put Berkshire into Tier 3 & then I can just travel there’. Before Cabinet I said to Gove ‘you did well not to say I told you so re putting London into Tier 3’. He grins.”

At the time, the chief whip was Mark Spencer.

Asked by Andrew O’Connor, counsel to Lady Hallett’s inquiry, to respond to Sir Patrick’s observations, Mr Cain said: “I think you can see from the evidence that he [Mr Johnson] was… concerned about the damage on society as a whole.

“And he was trying to view it through that lens. I think some of the language is obviously not what I would have used but for me the core argument was always the same which was your choice is that we lock down and control the virus and we do so as quick as possible to minimise cost to health and cost the economy at the same time.”