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Boris Johnson on Thursday denied considering a “let it rip” Covid-19 strategy in the autumn of 2020, saying his approach had been to save lives “at all ages”, in his second day of evidence to the UK pandemic inquiry.
The former prime minister said he had sought to “challenge the consensus” in meetings where colleagues were discussing the need for lockdown measures.
“People were continuously saying in the media and elsewhere that the answer was to shield the elderly and let [coronavirus] rip,” Johnson told the inquiry. “I needed to have the counterarguments.”
In recent weeks, former top officials have made a succession of damaging claims about Johnson’s leadership in evidence to the inquiry, which has also seen a series of inflammatory comments allegedly made by the former premier.
In diary entries from August and October 2020, Sir Patrick Vallance, the ex-chief scientific adviser, said Johnson had suggested elderly people “accept their fate” and argued for a “let the virus rip” approach in meetings.
Last month, Lord Eddie Lister, former chief strategic adviser, told the inquiry that Johnson said he would rather “let the bodies pile high” than impose another lockdown in September 2020.
On Thursday, Johnson hit out at Hugo Keith KC, direct counsel for the inquiry, accusing him of quoting from “accounts that you have culled from people’s jottings from meetings that I’ve been in”.
Johnson, who was in office between 2019 and 2022, said that his government’s position was “that we had to save human life at all ages”.
“If you look at what we actually did, we went into lockdown as soon as we could for the first time round”, he said, in a reference to his announcement on March 23 2020 of a UK shutdown. “And we sensibly went for a regional approach when the disease picked up again, and then again went into lockdown on October 30-31.”
In his first of two days of evidence on Wednesday, Johnson admitted his government “vastly underestimated” the infectiousness and lethality of Covid-19 and displayed “incoherence” in early 2020.
The inquiry is examining the government’s response to Covid-19, including the UK’s preparedness when the disease struck in 2020 and senior decision-making. It is due to run until the summer of 2026.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who was chancellor when the pandemic began, will give evidence on Monday.
Earlier on Thursday, Johnson said Sunak’s flagship meal subsidy scheme in the summer of 2020 had not been presented to him as “a gamble” that would direct to a rise in Covid cases.
He suggested launching the “Eat Out to Help Out” scheme was a logical advance after relaxing curbs that allowed the hospitality industry to reopen after the first lockdown.
But Johnson admitted he heard Professor Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, describe it as “Eat Out to Help Out the Virus” in September 2020.
The programme subsidised meals in restaurants in the summer of 2020. It has been blamed for increasing Covid transmission rates after the first lockdown ended in June.
Johnson said: “[Whitty] looked at me meaningfully, and I thought: ‘That’s funny because I don’t recollect this being something that had previously seemed to attract objection’.”
But Johnson said he had not perceived the scheme as a “gamble”, adding: “It certainly wasn’t presented to me as such, nor am I confident that there is very substantial evidence that it did indeed add to the [reproduction number] R.
“I must emphasise, it was not at the time presented to me as something that would add to the budget of risk,” said Johnson.
According to estimates from the Treasury, 100mn meals were eaten at an interim taxpayer cost of £522mn by the end of August 2020.
The inquiry has heard how senior scientific advisers were not consulted before the scheme was introduced. Johnson said on Thursday that he “thought that Chris and Patrick must have known”, in a reference to Whitty and Vallance.
Johnson added that he could not “comprehend how something as well publicised as that could have been smuggled past the scientific advice, I don’t see how that could have happened”.
Last week, the inquiry heard that Matt Hancock, former health secretary, had been privately critical of Eat Out to Help Out.
In a message from August 2020, Hancock told Sir Mark Sedwill, cabinet secretary at the time, that it was causing “serious” problems and argued “very strongly” against extending it.
