4 things we learned from Johnson’s Covid inquiry evidence
Boris Johnson spent more than 10 hours over two days being grilled by the Covid inquiry about his role in the pandemic.
He was twice on the verge of tears as he claimed he cared about the victims of the virus, but also faced an angry reaction from bereaved relatives who had come to watch his testimony.
Here are four things we learned from his evidence – and three things we didn’t:
Four things we learned
Mr Johnson denies being ‘shamefully ageist’
Some of the most shocking evidence heard by the inquiry has been entries in Sir Patrick Vallance’s diaries, which claimed Mr Johnson had said the elderly “had a good innings” and Covid was “nature’s way” of dealing with them.
Danny Friedman KC, representing Disabled People’s Organisations, put it to Mr Johnson that his language was “shamefully ageist”.
The ex-PM denied this and claimed he was reflecting a debate “that was very live” and that there were “a great number of older people who would make these points to me”.
He also insisted he cared “passionately” about the suffering of all victims of Covid, and became emotional when describing his own experience in intensive care with the virus.
Mr Johnson believed his Government’s face mask policy was f**ked up
The inquiry was shown a WhatsApp exchange between Mr Johnson and Dominic Cummings in which the then-PM said he was “trying to make sense of our totally f**ked up face mask policy”.
He told TUC legal counsel Sam Jacobs that he was trying to “convey my sense that a mask policy which had been in position one was going to have to change because of changing scientific advice and changing appreciations of the value of masks”.
The Government had not recommended the wearing of face masks at the start of the pandemic, but changed its policy by the summer of 2020, when Covid restrictions were lifted.
Mr Johnson ‘hated’ closing schools but had no choice
The former PM said he “hated” closing schools in the first and third national lockdowns, but claimed that it had been right not to reopen schools for the summer term of 2020 and instead delay until September, because classrooms were “reservoirs of risk” and that opening them through August was not “practically very easy to do”.
But he admitted that there has been an “education detriment” to children and that “the loss of life chances for young people has to be put in the scales when you are making these appalling choices about NPIs.”
When it came to the third lockdown in January 2021, Mr Johnson initially overruled his education secretary Sir Gavin Williamson, who wanted schools to close immediately.
He said he tried to “fight and fight and fight in my heart and head” for them to stay open on 4 January, but the next day announced they would close. He said this decision was “terrible”.
Barnard Castle was a ‘bad moment’
Inquiry counsel Hugo Keith KC asked Mr Johnson about Dominic Cummings’ lockdown-breaking trip to Durham in March 2020, while he and his family were experiencing symptoms of the virus, including a drive to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight.
Mr Keith told the former prime minister the revelation of this visit in May of that year led to public confidence in the Westminster Government dropping “significantly”.
Mr Johnson insisted that there was still strong public support for the Government’s Covid response after May 2020, but he admitted: “It was a bad moment, I won’t pretend otherwise.”
Three things we didn’t learn
Did Mr Johnson really say ‘let the bodies pile high’?
Although Mr Keith and Mr Friedman asked Mr Johnson about his language, including comments about the elderly, he was not challenged directly about whether he had said, in autumn 2020, he would rather “let the bodies pile high” than impose a second lockdown.
This was one of the key questions bereaved families had wanted an answer to.
Both Mr Cummings and former No10 chief of staff Lord Udny-Lister have testified on oath saying they heard Mr Johnson say these words.
Mr Johnson said that some of the language attributed to him was not correct.
Did he really offer to be infected with Covid on TV?
This was another question the families had wanted answered, but did not get put to Mr Johnson in the inquiry.
Mr Cummings and Lord Udny-Lister had both told the inquiry that Mr Johnson offered to infect himself with Covid on TV to “demonstrate that it did not pose a threat” and also asked Sir Patrick and Prof Chris Whitty if it was possible to use a hairdryer to kill the virus.
Why did he refuse to meet with bereaved families after the first wave?
After the first Covid wave in spring 2020, bereaved families wrote letters to the then-PM asking for a “rapid review” to learn lessons ahead of the second wave.
Mr Johnson did not agree to a meeting.
In the end, Mr Johnson resisted calls by scientific advisers and Mr Cummings to introduce a circuit breaker in September 2020 despite a second wave being well underway, and did not impose a second lockdown until November of that year.
He was not asked this question.