Families bereaved by the Covid pandemic say they feel insulted by Kemi Badenoch’s claim that the Partygate scandal was “overblown”.
The new Conservative party leader also told the BBC that Boris Johnson had fallen into a “trap” of breaking lockdown rules that should never have been introduced.
She told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: “I thought that it was overblown. We should not have created fixed penalty notices, for example. That was us not going with our principles.”
Adding that the public was “not wrong to be upset about Partygate”, Badenoch said: “The problem was that we should not have criminalised everyday activities the way that we did.
“People going out for walks, all of them having fixed penalty notices, that was what ended up creating a trap for Boris Johnson.”
Nazir Afzal, a former chief crown prosecutor for north-west England whose older brother Umar died of Covid while self-isolating, said Badenoch’s words could not gloss over the horrors of the pandemic.
He said: “Ms Badenoch needs to remember that people were dying and being stored in industrial fridges while those in government partied in breach of the rules that they created for the rest of us. It was a question of trust and integrity and such a failure cannot ever be overblown.”
Naomi Fulop, whose mother, Christina, died in January 2021, six days before one of the Downing Street parties that was found to have broken the rules, said Badenoch’s comments were “insulting and extremely painful”.
She said: “It is not possible to overblow the impact of those in government partying while my mother died alone. We then had to have a very restricted funeral, as did thousands and thousands of other people.”
Fulop, who is a member of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK group (CBFJUK), added: “I think she’s trying to appeal to people who don’t agree with lockdowns. She’s deeply misguided, because nobody is pro lockdown. Lockdowns are something that you have to have when everything else has failed.”
Fulop also claimed Badenoch’s comments risked undermining public trust in any future government’s public health messages. “All the scientists say there will be another pandemic, it’s a question of when not if, so this absolutely undermines public trust in government and public health messaging, which is very concerning,” she said.
Fulop added: “Badenoch said the Tory party needs to have an honest conversation about what’s gone wrong and one of the big things that went wrong was Partygate so I’m quite mystified that she doesn’t realise the impact that’s had on families like mine and the wider public.”
Matt Fowler, whose 56-year-old father, Ian, died of Covid in April 2020, said: “It sounds as if she’s is trying to cover over the failures of her party which is horrifying and insulting. It shows a complete lack of empathy or self-awareness that does an incredible amount of damage to public trust.”
Fowler, who is also a member of CBFJUK, said: “The fact that ministers were breaking safeguarding rules that were put in place specifically to protect people, while other people were obeying those rules and not being able to say goodbye to loved ones, was horrible. It was thumbing the nose at the general public.”
Dr Simon Williams, a behavioural scientist and public health researcher at Swansea University, said Badenoch’s remarks were “disgraceful”.
He said: “Research has shown that Partygate and others scandals really did have an effect on public trust in government and particularly public trust in the rules. So as well as being offensive, it’s very unhelpful to try to retrospectively minimise the impact of Partygate.”
He added: “There was a real sense that those who set the rules were flouting them or bending them and that really undermined the public message, so there are trickle on effects for saying this was all overblown.”
Nathan Oswin, who leads the TUC’s work on the Covid public inquiry, said: “From what key workers and working people have told us, It’s hard to believe they judge it as ‘overblown’. The Covid-19 public inquiry has heard time and again how much hurt the Partygate revelations caused to people across the country.
“It’s now for the inquiry to establish the facts and for the public to make their own minds up on the legacy of rules being broken in Downing Street.”
