Closing summary
That’s the end of the day’s hearing. Here’s a summary of the key events:
Boris Johnson said he avoided cooperating with devolved administrations for political reasons. The former prime minister was confronted with his own insistence that it would have been “optically wrong for the UK prime minister to hold regular meetings with other devolved administration ministers”. And he was asked about the claim of one of his key advisers that he refused to deal with the Scottish first minister during the pandemic because of a personal enmity – despite the potentially disastrous effect that course of action could have on the effectiveness of anti-Covid measures in the UK.
The former prime minister was described as “self-serving” and “unfit for power” by bereaved families. “As his messages showed today, even when he knew measures needed to be taken to protect lives, he delayed for fear of how it might impact his reputation with certain sections of the press,” their spokesperson said.
No scientists attended meetings about the “eat out to help out” scheme before it launched, Johnson said. He said he had “frankly assumed” they were involved in talks about the scheme with the Treasury and he was “surprised it was smuggled past them”.
Johnson was shown repeated instances of Patrick Vallance attributing the phrase “let it rip” to him in contemporaneous diary entries. Johnson has denied he used the phrase. The inquiry was shown several diary entries from Vallance with recollections of Johnson using the phrase “let it rip”.
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'Self-serving' Johnson unfit for power, say bereaved families
After Johnson’s second appearance at the inquiry, Becky Kummer, a spokesperson for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, says:
Our questioning today showed that Johnson’s claims about the pandemic fall apart under the slightest scrutiny.
He did not ‘get the big calls right’, he failed to take the pandemic seriously in early 2020 leaving us brutally unprepared, and failed to learn from his mistakes meaning that the second wave had an even higher death toll than the first. The NHS was in fact severely overwhelmed, which he would know if he had met with the many thousands of bereaved families whose loved ones either couldn’t get in to hospital, or couldn’t get the treatment they needed once there. The UK was not ‘in the middle of the pack’, it suffered the second highest death toll in western Europe.
As his messages showed today, even when he knew measures needed to be taken to protect lives, he delayed for fear of how it might impact his reputation with certain sections of the press.
If his vanity hadn’t taken priority over public health, many thousands of people, including my dad, might still be with us today. There are many lessons from the pandemic that might save lives in the future, but one of them is undoubtedly that someone as self-serving as Boris Johnson is not fit for power.
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Closing the day’s evidence, Johnson addresses Lady Hallett. He reprises comments briefed out to journalists before he started giving evidence.
He tells the inquiry’s chair that while it’s outside the scope of her work, he hopes she will be able to provide “some sort of prod to the world to get the answer to the real origins of Covid”.
Hallett reminds him that it does indeed fall outside of her terms of reference. And that he was the person who set those terms.
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Brian Stanton, for the British Medical Association, asks Johnson about the framing of the removal of Covid measures in July 2021 as bringing “freedom”. He asks Johnson to what extent the government prematurely gave the impression the pandemic was over, only to reintroduce restrictions within weeks.
Johnson says the progress made as part of the vaccination programme meant it was not inappropriate language.
Samuel Jacobs, acting for the Trades Union Congress (TUC), asks about the former prime minister’s view, expressed in 2021, that “we can’t have the bollocks of consulting with employees and trade unions. They need to all come back to work. All the malingering, workshy people”.
He asks Johnson if his “dismissive” attitude was unbecoming of a prime minister.
Johnson claims his government did not ignore the difficulties facing working people. He adds that lockdowns were harming people on lower incomes, and that getting them back to work was the answer.
Jacobs presses him on the question of whether, by explicitly dismissing the prospect of consulting with workers’ representatives, he was driving an unhelpful culture. “Not necessarily,” Johnson tells the inquiry. He goes on to talk about the vaccination programme, saying this made it possible to get people back to work.
Jacobs asks why any of that means there should be no consultation with workers’ representatives. Despite being quoted as referring to such consultation as “bollocks”, Johnson claims he had “nothing against consultation”.
Instead, he claims, he was concerned about a “drag anchor” being put on getting people back to work.
Johnson says his primary concern was that, if consulted, working people might seek to maintain the more flexible working patterns he did not believe would benefit the economy.
He says he was worried people would be “slow to acknowledge” the progress towards returning to work the vaccination programme had made, and that there would be an “inertia, and a desire to stay with the working from home pattern”.
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Davies asks Johnson what lessons were learned on protecting people from domestic abuse from the first lockdown, and taken into subsequent lockdowns. Johnson talks at length about legislation his government introduced, which Davies reminds him is irrelevant because it did not refer to lockdown measures.
Johnson finishes by saying the government invested in telephone hotlines.
Liz Davies KC, on behalf of several organisations that work against violence against women and girls, asks Johnson why his government explicitly failed to mention domestic abuse as a reason someone could leave their home before 2021. Johnson acknowledges that, in hindsight, ministers should have done more – and done it more clearly.
Returning to his answer, Johnson says – given the misery of lockdowns for older people as well as younger – it was “reasonable to think about other approaches, and whether the continued lockdowns were effective. But, in the end, we had no alternative”.
Danny Friedman KC, acting for disabled people’s organisations, asks Johnson about his comments that older people were “going to die anyway, have had a good innings, and should accept their fate, rather than destroying the economy”. He asks if his choice of words represents “shameful ageism”.
Johnson disagrees, saying he was doing his best to “reflect a debate that was very live”, claiming that some “older people … would make these points to me”.
Friedman is upbraided by the chair for using emotive language in his question that Lady Hallett says she did not approve.
Menon asks why England pursued a “more draconian approach than Scotland and Wales” in respect of exempting younger children from certain restrictions. Johnson says the UK government was trying to reduce transmission.
Menon notes that the inquiry has heard no evidence the Scottish and Welsh governments’ approaches were more dangerous than that pursued by the UK government in England.
Rajiv Menon KC is now addressing Johnson on behalf of several children’s rights organisations. He challenges Johnson on his claim that schools would be the last to close and the first to reopen, when he says “pubs and hairdressers” were reopened earlier.
Johnson says the government looked at extending the school year once schools could reopen, but ministers felt it made more sense – given the normal school calendar – to close them for the summer and reopen at the usual time.
Anthony Metzer KC is questioning Johnson on behalf of long Covid groups. He is asked if, like his former adviser Dominic Cummings and the former health secretary Matt Hancock, he received advice on long Covid.
It is put to him that, while he’d seen no evidence to support his scepticism – and, indeed, had been pushed to acknowledge it by his advisers and colleagues, Johnson remained unconvinced it was a serious problem for a substantial amount of time.
Johnson said he was not suggesting it was not a problem, but that he wanted to see evidence of its extent. Asked about his assertion that the effects of long Covid were “bollocks”, he is asked why he did not simply ask for the NIHR report that had been published on it.
Johnson tries to claim that he did ask for some research – and did eventually see evidence on long Covid – but is finally pushed to acknowledge that he never asked to see the NIHR report.
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Johnson claims there was no medical reason for the disproportionate effects of the pandemic on people of colour, saying it must have been due to what he believes was their greater exposure to risk as a result of being more likely to be on the “frontline”.
Thomas pulls him up and asks if he was not aware of the role of “institutional racism within the NHS”, to which the former health secretary Matt Hancock referred, and that was set out in a Public Health England report. He asks the prime minister to clarify that it is his position that, as prime minister, he was unaware of that report.
Johnson tells the inquiry the evidence he saw did not support that conclusion.
Leslie Thomas KC is now putting questions to Johnson on behalf of the Federation of Ethnic Minority Healthcare Organisations (FEMHO). He asks the former prime minister if he agrees it’s important to acknowledge the sacrifice of healthcare workers – especially those from minority ethnic backgrounds – as well as whether he owes them a personal debt after his own hospitalisations. Johnson agrees on both counts.
Thomas goes on to ask Johnson about Patrick Vallance’s view that the healthcare disparities seen during the pandemic were “entirely foreseeable”, and that the pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities. Why, then, did his government not act to “mitigate the potential harsher effects of the pandemic on vulnerable and minority groups”, Thomas asks?
Johnson tells the inquiry he was advised from the start that lockdowns were likely to be particularly harsh on people from disadvantaged backgrounds. He appears to suggest this was one of the reasons he was reluctant to go into lockdown.
He is asked to define the specific measures his government put in place to protect such people. Johnson says the government did not know the “extent to which the virus itself would impact different groups differently” in the run-up to the first national lockdown.
Thomas clarifies that he was asking about specific protective measures, before trying to move on. Johnson, talking over him, says it was difficult to put in place measures until the reasons for the disparities had been established.
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The inquiry is now rising for about 10 minutes.
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Pressed on whether he could have been clearer about which messages applied in which nations of the UK, Johnson says he could have done that – and maybe it would have been better. But he insists he believes it would have made things less clear for many people.
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Johnson is presented with his own stated view that government messaging was the most important tool at its disposal. Then he is presented with a report suggesting government ministers routinely used phrases such as ‘this country’ when they meant England – potentially confusing large numbers of people in the other nations of the UK, as well as in England.
Johnson says he did clarify, on occasion, when measures applied only to England. And that government ministers cannot be criticised for using common parlance.
He is asked if the UK government did not fail to use the single most important tool at its disposal. Johnson responds by saying that, on the contrary, it was notable how successfully ministers explained complex rules.
The inquiry moves on to questions from Claire Mitchell KC, who appears on behalf of the Scottish Covid Bereaved group. She asks Johnson about his apparent reluctance to speak to the then Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon early in the pandemic because – in the words of one of his closest aides – of a personal enmity towards her on Johnson’s part.
The former UK prime minister denies this. But he says that, “politically, there was a certain amount of to-ing and fro-ing” between him and the SNP.
Johnson is asked if this was part of the reason he had so few meetings with Scottish government figures. He says his relationship with Sturgeon was always “professional” and repeats his claim that delegating to Gove would “take the steam out of” the discussions.
Again, he refers to his fear that people who are “not necessarily my number-one political fans feeling the need to chip paint off the government”.
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Johnson says he avoided cooperating with devolved administrations for political reasons
Bethan Harris is now addressing Johnson on behalf of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru. The former prime minister rejects her suggestion he was guilty of failing to engage and cooperate with representatives from the four nations of the UK during the pandemic.
Responding to the suggestion from the Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, there was a “vacuum” in terms of his ability to engage directly with No 10, Johnson says he believed Michael Gove – then the cabinet secretary – was handling relations properly.
It is also put to him that, in his own witness statement, he said it was “optically wrong for the UK prime minister to hold regular meetings with other devolved administration ministers”. Does he not agree that he should have been making decisions based solely on their effectiveness at fighting Covid, not the “optics”?
Johnson tells the inquiry he believes Gove was best-placed to deal with the leaders of the devolved administrations.
Harris presses him again. Johnson suggests he was suspicious the leaders of the devolved administrations would use any meetings to outflank him politically. He tells Harris:
My considerations were – to be absolutely frank with the inquiry – the risk of pointless political friction and grandstanding because of the well-known opposition of some of the [devolved administrations] to the government – and also to avoid unnecessary leaks.
And I thought the way to minimise divergence and tensions – and you can quarrel with this judgment – was to take the temperature down, and to have businesslike practical meetings between the [devolved administrations] and [the then chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Michael Gove]… and I think, by and large, it was extremely effective.
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Campbell puts it to Johnson that he sought to speak for all four nations of the UK and, in so doing, did not leave enough room for local authorities to tailor their public messaging around Covid measures in their areas.
Johnson says he believes there was some confusion about the UK government’s messaging, with many people finding it difficult to understand why measures were different in some geographical areas to others. But, broadly, he rejects the premise that his government got in the way off clearer local messaging.
The inquiry is back, with Johnson now taking questions from Brenda Campbell, who appears on behalf of the Northern Ireland Bereaved Families for Justice campaign.
She asks him if he understands the hurt felt by those who were denied the possibility of even saying goodbye to their loved ones at seeing the people making the rules also flouting them. The former prime minister says he does “of course” understand that.
Campbell asks why, then, the party in No 10 on 18 December 2020 was allowed to happen. Johnson tells her he has tried to explain why people in Downing Street, who were “working very hard” believed at the time they were operating within the rules. Though he insists he takes Campbell’s point.
He is asked if he could have done more to stop the “gatherings, the Partygate, the wine and cheese parties, the secret Santas, the Zoom quizzes”. Johnson tries to head off the question by saying he had no knowledge of the specific event in question. But Campbell tells him that was not her question. Could he have done more to stop it, she repeats.
“Given what I knew at the time about what was going on, the answer to that is no,” he says. “But, possibly, what I should have done is issued a general instruction to everybody to be mindful of the rules and how things would appear.”
It should be noted that Parliament’s privileges committee found Johnson did have knowledge – albeit limited – of the 18 December 2020 press office gathering. Limited, the MPs found, because – while he was in No 10 that day – he was not personally present at the party. He was, however, present for at least one of the three gatherings that took place the previous day – among others during the pandemic.
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The blog will be paused while the inquiry is on a break. In the meantime, here is John Crace’s take on Johnson’s inquiry performance yesterday.
Afternoon summary
Here is a summary of the morning’s events:
No scientists attended meetings about “eat out to help out” scheme before it launched, Johnson said. Johnson said he had “frankly assumed” they were involved in talks about the scheme with the Treasury and that he was “surprised it was smuggled past them”.
Johnson was shown repeated instances of Patrick Vallance attributing the phrase “let it rip” to the former prime minister in contemporaneous diary entries, despite denials by Johnson he had used the phrase. The inquiry was shown a several dairy entries from Vallance that showed numerous recollections of Johnson using the phrase “let it rip”.
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Johnson said “fuck you Daily Mail”, which was critical about the government’s lockdown restrictions, in talks with Patrick Vallance and Matt Hancock in September 2020 about rising hospital admissions and the rule of six, adding “we need to remember the grim history of March”
Weatherby suggested Johnson had competing pressures from the media. He said “he was sorry to have said that about the Daily Mail” which he later murmured was a “great organisation”, adding it was “presumably something they had said that had wound me up about the rule of six”.
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Heather Hallett, the chair of the Covid-19 public inquiry, urged members of the public gallery to stop making noise during Boris Johnson’s evidence.
Pete Weatherby KC, who represents the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice, was asking questions about part of the former prime minister’s statement to the inquiry where he said that the “United Kingdom has defied most of the gloomier predictions and has ended the pandemic, or the most serious phases of it, well down the global league tables for excess mortality”.
Johnson said: “The point I was making, and which I stand by, is that the UK, the tables I’ve seen, actually comes about halfway down.
“This is not in any way to diminish the pain and the suffering of people who lost family members during Covid, it is to reflect the enormous effort made by the whole of the UK to protect the NHS and save lives.”
Weatherby said: “You’ve raised this in your statement, you made a sweeping assertion that the UK defied the more gloomy predictions, I’m putting to some cold steel of evidence.”
Johnson replied: “But I don’t believe that your evidence stacks up,” which drew jeers from the public gallery.
Hallett said: “I’m sorry, I know that emotions are running high but I have to ask those in the public gallery to keep quiet, whatever their emotions, because it’s going to disrupt the proceedings and it affects the live feed, the streaming for other people trying to follow.
“I’m really sorry. I do understand, but it has to stop.”
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A WhatsApp conversation sent in December 2021 between Johnson and former cabinet secretary Simon Case was shown to the inquiry.
One of the messages sent by Johnson said: “In retrospect we all should have told people – above all Lee Cain – to think about their behaviour in Number 10 and how it would look. But now we must smash on.”
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Public characterisation of the Partygate row a 'travesty of the truth', Johnson claims
Johnson called the public characterisation of the Partygate row a “travesty of the truth”.
He also said that “the dramatic representations that we’re now having of this are absolutely absurd”.
He said: “I really want to emphasise, and you talk about the impression, the version of events that has entered the popular consciousness about what is supposed to have happened in Downing Street is a million miles from the reality of what actually happened in Number 10.”
He said he was speaking on behalf of “hundreds and hundreds of hard-working civil servants who thought that they were following the rules”.
He said that the “characterisation, the representation, has been of what civil servants and advisers were doing in Number 10 has been a travesty of the truth”.
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Johnson said it was “terrible” but “inevitable” to have to close schools again in January 2021 after the emergence of the more transmissible Alpha variant of the virus.
He told the inquiry: “It’s always the most vulnerable families, it’s the poorest kids who come off worse from school closures. And that was definitely the case, we’d seen that in the first lockdown without a shadow of a doubt.
“So we were desperate to keep schools open.”
He insisted he did “fight and fight and fight in my heart and head to keep schools open”.
He added: “I really wanted to do it, but it just wasn’t a runner and we had to lock everything down.”
He said he had “listened respectfully” to his many colleagues, including the then education secretary, Gavin Williamson, who wanted to keep schools open.
Johnson said: “The fact is that, sadly, schools are terrific reservoirs of the virus. And in the cold winter months, they were going to be a big vector of transmission for elderly people and it wasn’t a runner.”
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Keith read a note to the inquiry from a planning meeting from 25 October 2020 where Johnson said he was not “going to be stampeded into a national lockdown yet”.
Three days later, the Covid taskforce went to Johnson and said tiers did not seem to be working and a second lockdown was needed.
Johnson told the inquiry it “was quite right not to be stampeded into any course of action but the virus, irrespective of the Covid taskforce, the virus was spreading and it was spreading exponentially”.
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Johnson said the tier system on restrictions in 2020 had ended up proving “divisive and difficult” and he told the Covid inquiry he was sad it had not worked but felt it had been “worth a try”.
Keith put it to the former prime minister that the tiers had not worked.
Johnson replied: “They didn’t and I’m very sad about that. But I think that they were logically, rationally as we came out of the restrictions in the summer [2020], they were worth a try.
“The trouble was that they became very invidious as between areas – because one village would suddenly find itself in very heavy restrictions, the village next door was [the lesser tier] 1, while the incidence of the virus was exactly the same.
“Local politicians of all kinds became very worked up, sometimes quite paranoid about the tiering approach.
“It clearly was proving divisive and difficult to implement.”
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Johnson said a “proper, quantified analysis” of the epidemiological benefits as well as the economic costs of non-pharmaceutical interventions would be “useful”.
Keith said: “Is there a case, by way of one of the many lessons to be learned, for a formalised system of cost-benefit calculation so that the Treasury and the wider world can see how there can be a quantitative analysis of the impact of interventions economically?”
Johnson replied: “The Treasury does a phenomenal amount of cost benefit analysis, as you can imagine, already, and yes, I think that, as I’ve said already, My Lady, I think what we really need to have is some proper, quantified analysis of the benefits of NPIs [non pharmaceutical interventions] and the epidemiological benefits of NPIs.
“Because I think there’s still too much uncertainty about those. As well as a proper understanding of the economic costs. So yes, I think if there could be some way of putting those two things together in a formalised way that might very well be useful.
“But that was effectively what I was doing the whole time. Week in week out, those were the calculations we were making. But I want to stress that the objective was always saving life and that was what we were trying to do.”
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Keith said it had been suggested by Dominic Cummings that the cabinet process had been more “politically excitable”, at which point Boris Johnson interjected to suggest the word “performative”.
Keith said: “Thank you. Performative. How there were worries about leaks, where it was more a matter of political theatre.”
Johnson replied: “I think that’s certainly a fair criticism of some cabinet meetings but as time went on, I genuinely think that cabinet proved to be more and more valuable, and you genuinely started to have different points of view properly represented around the table, and different departmental interests, particularly HMT [the Treasury], properly represented.
“And it became a much more … I started to see the wisdom in the system and I think it worked.”
Johnson says he wanted to save lives 'at all ages' after Vallance diary claims former PM said those who died 'had a good innings'
After Johnson denied he had used the phrase “let the virus rip”, Keith shows the inquiry a dairy entry from Patrick Vallance from June 2020 that said: “Actually having a discussion [meeting with the MP] about letting [Covid] rip.”
In response, Johnson said “this is exactly what you’d expect me to be talking about at this stage”.
After this, further entries from Vallance’s diaries were shown.
Another extract from Vallance’s diary dated October 2020 says Johnson argued for “letting it all rip” and that he said: “there will be more casualties but so be it – ‘they’ve had a good innings’”.
An extract from May 2021 claimed Johnson said they should let Covid “rip a bit”.
In August 2020, Vallance wrote Johnson was “obsessed with older people accepting their fate and letting the young get on in life and the economy going”.
An entry from October 2020 said Johnson was “now obsessed with the average age of death being 82” which was “longer than average life expectancy”, adding that Johnson had said: “Get Covid, live longer”.
In response, Johnson said: “The implication that you’re you’re trying to draw from those conversations is completely wrong and my position was that we had to save human life at all ages.”
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Johnson said he asked government scientists and experts whether over-65s should be given the choice to enter “spontaneous self-preservation and keep themselves to themselves or run the risk of hugging their grandchildren and engaging fully in society”.
Johnson said the policy was not pursued because he was told: “Even if you’ve elected to be shielded, or even if the government is trying to shield this segment of the population, it is not going to work because the infectiousness is too great.”
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Johnson said he had “a great deal of sympathy for the police, those who are charged with enforcing [rules], because it changed very often”.
He added: “I think there were 60 separate changes, and the complexities for the public to understand were very grey.”
Asked how it might be done differently in future, Johnson said: “I think that there needs to be a great deal of reflection about simplifying the whole approach, and seeing what we can do to rely more on common sense and less on regulation and legislation.
“But there may be limits to that. I’m not suggesting there is an easy answer, because the reason fundamentally in the UK, and I say this to all the libertarians, why you need regulation is because ultimately people want to see everybody being obliged to obey the same set of rules and they want their neighbours to do what they are doing.”
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No scientists attended meetings about eat out to help out scheme before it launched, says Johnson
Johnson has walked back claims that Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance were present to “properly discuss” the eat out to help out scheme before it went live, conceding that no scientists attended meetings about the scheme.
Johnson said he had “frankly assumed” they were involved in talks about the scheme with the Treasury and that he was “surprised it was smuggled past them”.
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Johnson said the eat out to help out scheme was not presented as something that would accelerate transmission.
Keith says this argument was put forward by the chancellor and the Treasury.
Johnson also said he could see evidence that “conclusively shows” the eat out to help out scheme made a big difference to Covid transmission rates.
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Hugo Keith KC asks about the eat out to help out scheme and the rational behind it.
Johnson said the country had made a huge effort, that the R number was below 1 and that the “budget of risk” was enough to reopen hospitality.
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Hugo Keith KC is opening today’s session. He begins by asking Johnson about the 1 metre rule for social distancing.
Scientific advice suggested 2 metres as a safer distance, Keith says.
He asks Johnson if this is an example of the need to help businesses affecting policy decisions.
Johnson says that the scientific advice actually suggested 3 metres would have been better – it did not seem to him “on balance” necessary to impose more than 1 metre of social distancing considering the impact it would have on hospitality.
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If you refresh this page, a live stream of Boris Johnson at the Covid inquiry will appear at the top. My colleague Sammy Gecsoyler will take you through Johnson’s evidence.
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With so much happening today, we’re running two UK politics live blogs. This one will focus on Boris Johnson’s evidence to the Covid inquiry. Andrew Sparrow’s regular politics blog, meanwhile, will focus on the deepening rift within the Tory party. You can follow that here:
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At his first day of evidence to the inquiry on Wednesday, Boris Johnson apologised for “the pain and suffering” people experienced during the pandemic – but he also admitted “vastly underestimating the risks” in the early stages of the pandemic and denied that there was a toxic culture at No 10.
My colleagues Matthew Weaver and Ben Quinn have a round up of the day’s key takeaways here:
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Analysis: we saw Johnson on his best behaviour yesterday – but it won’t do him any good
When Boris Johnson arrived three hours early for his long-awaited evidence session at the Covid inquiry on Wednesday morning, it was still dark outside, leading one minister to joke that “it’s the first time Boris has ever been early for anything”.
Johnson’s promptness – which meant he avoided the families of some of those who died during the pandemic gathering outside – was not an indication that he had turned over a new leaf, rather that he wanted to avoid all the negative headlines he possibly could.
The former prime minister is acutely aware that his first appearance in front of the official inquiry is a key moment in shaping his long-term legacy – particularly as his friends claim that he still harbours hopes of making a political comeback.
In previous weeks, evidence at the inquiry has painted – in the words of its lead counsel, Hugo Keith KC – “an appalling picture of incompetence and disarray” at the heart of Johnson’s government. He has been described by a string of advisers as indecisive and lacking in leadership, and even as a “trolley” veering from one position to another.
So this was always going to be a perilous moment for Johnson, with his government facing criticism for its slow initial response to the pandemic, decisions such as discharging patients from hospitals into care homes, schemes such as “eat out to help out” and delays in locking down the country a second time.
Read on here:
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In a full day of questioning by the inquiry’s lead counsel, Hugo Keith KC, Johnson frequently said he couldn’t recall meetings or what he had been told by his ministers and advisers.
In a version of events described as “deluded” by one bereaved relative watching in the room, Johnson rejected yet more evidence of bitter internal warfare involving officials, notably his then chief adviser, Dominic Cummings.
While conceding some errors over the outbreak of the virus, saying there were “clearly things we could and should have done if we had known and understood how fast it was spreading”, Johnson insisted these lessons were only apparent in retrospect.
He faces Keith for a second session shortly, when he will be challenged over delays to locking down the country for a second time. Rishi Sunak will appear next week.
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Johnson returns for second day at the Covid inquiry
Good morning. Boris Johnson is returning to the UK Covid inquiry today to face further questions on his government’s handling of the pandemic.
Yesterday, he admitted there were decisions that his government “could and should have” made to stop the spread of coronavirus but denied he had made major mistakes and attempted to defend the chaotic and abusive culture in his top team.
The former prime minister even insisted that a Downing Street culture widely described as toxic and dysfunctional in fact led to better decisions.
You can read the full report from my colleagues Peter Walker and Robert Booth here:
Johnson’s evidence is due to begin at 10am and we will have a live stream of it here.
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