Boris Johnson denies considering ‘let it rip’ Covid strategy

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

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 and final day of testimony to the UK pandemic inquiry.

The former prime minister said he had sought to “challenge the consensus” in meetings where colleagues discussed the need for lockdown measures, and at points displayed frustration at the inquiry’s presentation of evidence.

“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.”

Johnson, in office between 2019 and 2022, also said it had been “unsustainable” for officials to follow Covid guidelines in government offices, when asked about rule-breaking parties in Downing Street at the height of the crisis.

He said the version of events that had “entered the popular consciousness” around informal gatherings were “absurd” and a “million miles away” from the truth.

Johnson, along with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, was fined by the police after he breached lockdown curbs by hosting a birthday party in June 2020.

Sunak, who was chancellor when the pandemic began, will appear before the inquiry on Monday.

In recent weeks, former top officials have made 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 that elderly people, who had “had a good innings”, should “accept their fate”. Vallance added that Johnson 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.

Asked about his use of language, Johnson on Thursday apologised for any “hurt and offence” but said he “wanted to represent the layman to get an answer that was intelligible”.

“I wanted everybody in the room to feel that they can also speak freely”, he added.

Johnson hit out at Hugo Keith KC, lead 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”.

He said 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,” Johnson 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.”

On Wednesday, Johnson admitted that 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.

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 lead to a rise in Covid cases.

He suggested launching the “Eat Out to Help Out” scheme was a logical move after relaxing curbs that allowed the hospitality industry to reopen after the first lockdown.

But Johnson admitted that he had heard Professor Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, describe it as “Eat Out to Help Out the Virus” in September 2020.

The programme, which subsidised meals in restaurants in the summer of 2020, has been blamed for increasing Covid transmission rates.

Johnson said: “[Whitty] looked at me meaningfully, and I thought: ‘That’s funny because I don’t remember 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.

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 Eat Out to Help Out was introduced. Johnson said on Thursday that he “thought that Chris and Patrick must have known”, referring to Whitty and Vallance.

Johnson added that he could not “understand how something as well publicised as [the scheme] could have been smuggled past the scientific advice, I don’t see how that could have happened”.