Boris Johnson: We got things wrong during Covid-19 pandemic
Boris Johnson says he takes "personal responsibility for all the decisions" the government made during the Covid-19 pandemic. The former prime minister admits "we got things wrong" and that there were "unquestionably" things that should have been done differently. Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 So many people suffered, so many people lost their lives. Inevitably, in the course of
00:08 trying to handle a very, very difficult pandemic in which we had to balance
00:14 appalling harms on either side of the decision, we may have made mistakes. I think it,
00:26 I don't want to try to anticipate the discussion, which I'm sure we will get into, about
00:32 the timings of MPIs, of lockdowns.
00:38 Inevitably, we got some things wrong. I think we were doing our best at the time, given what
00:51 we knew, given the information I had available to me at the time, I think we did our level best.
00:57 Were there things that we should have done differently? Unquestionably. But I would
01:06 struggle to itemise them all before you now in a hierarchy, I'm afraid. I think it would be,
01:15 I'd find it easier to try and explain what happened as we went through.
01:21 You say in your witness statement, we, I, unquestionably made mistakes.
01:26 Can you draw a distinction for us, please, between yourself personally and the government?
01:33 To what extent do you accept personal responsibility, as opposed to accepting
01:38 it on behalf of your administration? So I take personal responsibility for
01:42 all the decisions that we made.