Top 7 Takeaways from Boris Johnson’s Two Days of Testimony at The Covid Inquiry
After two gruelling days of giving evidence, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s time at the COVID-19 Inquiry is up. Here are some of the main takeaways from his 10 hours in the witness box:
1. He made mistakes, and he is sorry.
2. He didn’t always have enough information about the risks.
3. Boasting about shaking hands with COVID patients was a bad idea.
4. ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ seemed like a good idea at the time.
5. Matt Hancock did a good job.
6. Partygate was exaggerated.
7. Having been in intensive care with the virus himself, he understands the devastation it caused. Report by Gracex. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
1. He made mistakes, and he is sorry.
2. He didn’t always have enough information about the risks.
3. Boasting about shaking hands with COVID patients was a bad idea.
4. ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ seemed like a good idea at the time.
5. Matt Hancock did a good job.
6. Partygate was exaggerated.
7. Having been in intensive care with the virus himself, he understands the devastation it caused. Report by Gracex. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Transcript
00:00 I swear by almighty God that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth,
00:07 and nothing but the truth. After two gruelling days of giving evidence,
00:12 former Prime Minister Boris Johnson's time at the Covid inquiry is up. Here are some of the
00:18 main takeaways from his 10 hours in the witness box. Firstly, the question many people had been
00:25 waiting to see answered. Did he have any regrets about his decision making during the pandemic?
00:31 The answer appeared to be yes.
00:40 "My lady, can I just say how glad I am to be at this inquiry and how sorry I am for the
00:48 pain and the loss and the suffering of the Covid victims."
00:54 All of a protester and some heckling got in the way of an uninterrupted apology.
01:01 "I'm sorry, if you don't sit down, I'm going to ask the ushers to get you to leave."
01:07 "I understand the feelings of these victims and their families and I am deeply sorry for the pain
01:13 and the loss and the suffering of those victims and their families."
01:18 But Johnson did take pains to emphasise how chaotic and unprecedented the early stages
01:26 of the pandemic were, and implied that he often felt he simply wasn't properly informed
01:32 of the true nature and risks of the virus. "Mr Hancock had been told there was credible
01:38 evidence of asymptomatic transmission within Germany at a meeting on the 28th of January."
01:43 "Well, if I was told that, I've completely forgotten it. My memory of asymptomatic,
01:48 the asymptomatic transmission issue is as I've told you. The scientific community within Whitehall
01:57 at that stage was not telling us, I was not being informed that this was something that was going to
02:03 require urgent and immediate action."
02:08 The former Prime Minister also seemed to regret his decision to shake hands with staff and Covid
02:15 victims in a hospital in March 2020, despite appearing proud of his behaviour in a press
02:21 conference a day later. "Well, Victoria, I can tell you that I'm shaking hands,
02:27 I was at a hospital the other night where I think there were a few, there were actually a few
02:30 coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody, you'll be pleased to know, and I
02:35 continue to shake hands and uh..." "But I do think that it was, I shouldn't have, I shouldn't have
02:40 done that in retrospect and I should have, I should have been more precautionary, but I wanted,
02:49 I wanted to be encouraging to people." Johnson also defended then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak's
02:56 'Eat Out to Help Out' scheme. The scheme cost the Treasury about £850 million,
03:03 and some scientists claim it led to a spike in cases of Covid-19, but Johnson stressed they
03:10 were just making the best of freedoms already available under the rules at the time. "Logically,
03:16 if we were going to take advantage of that, if we're going to allow people to take advantage of,
03:23 allow the hospitality sector to take advantage of the, of the freedom that our collective efforts
03:30 had won them, then it seemed to me to make sense to make sure that they actually had some,
03:38 some customers. That was, that was my thinking and it seemed to me that if it was safe to
03:45 open hospitality, then it must be safe for people to, to go to hospitality."
03:52 The Health Secretary at the time, Matt Hancock, gave evidence to the Covid inquiry last week.
03:57 Some had expected Johnson to be intensely critical of him, but instead he appeared to defend his
04:04 conduct. "Matt Hancock was doing a good job. He's extremely, well, he's intellectually able, he was
04:13 on top of the subject and whatever his failings may or may not have been, I didn't see any
04:25 advantage to the country at a critical time, to the country in moving him in exchange for someone
04:36 else. Well, I couldn't be sure that we were necessarily going to be trading up." And he
04:43 made it clear what he thought of an allegation made by his former top advisor, Dominic Cummings,
04:48 that Hancock had been set up as a sacrificial lamb. "Mr Cummings says in the summer of 2020,
04:55 Mr Johnson refused to replace Mr Hancock despite repeated requests from me,
05:01 both cabinet secretaries and many others. His political secretary told me the Prime Minister
05:09 wanted to keep Mr Hancock as the sacrifice for the inquiry. Now, that is, of course,
05:15 you may say a piece of double hearsay, but Mr Cummings has it in his witness statement,
05:22 and therefore you need to answer it." "Well, sure. Well, I don't remember that at all. And,
05:30 and it's nonsense." On the topic of Partygate, the series of unlawful gatherings and parties
05:37 across Whitehall during Covid lockdowns, Johnson felt the matter had been misrepresented
05:42 and exaggerated. "I continue to regret very much what happened, but I really want to
05:49 emphasise, and you talk about the impression, the version of events that has entered the popular
05:58 consciousness about what is supposed to have happened in Downing Street, is a million miles
06:04 from the reality of what actually happened in Number 10. And I speak on behalf of, I know,
06:11 of hundreds and hundreds of hard-working civil servants who thought that they were following
06:19 the rules." And finally, we saw Johnson firmly refute allegations that he didn't care about the
06:25 suffering caused by Covid, recounting his own time spent in intensive care after he too contracted
06:32 the virus. "I haven't talked about this before, and it goes to what you were saying earlier about,
06:38 about elderly people, and
06:50 my, what you claim is my indifference to the, to the pandemic. I just want to remind you that I,
06:58 when I went into intensive care, I saw around me a lot of people who were not actually elderly.
07:14 And in fact, they were middle-aged men, and they were, they were quite like me.
07:20 And some of us were going to make it, and some of us weren't. And what I'm trying to tell you,
07:27 in a nutshell, and the NHS, thank God, did an amazing job and, and helped me survive. But
07:35 I knew from that experience what an appalling disease this is."
07:43 The former Prime Minister's testimony is now over.
07:46 Next up is the current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, due to give evidence on Monday.