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:
He made mistakes, and he is sorry.
He didn’t always have enough information about the risks.
Boasting about shaking hands with COVID patients was a bad idea.
‘Eat Out to Help Out’ seemed like a good idea at the time.
Matt Hancock did a good job.
Partygate was exaggerated.
Having been in intensive care with the virus himself, he understands the devastation it caused. Report by Blairm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
He made mistakes, and he is sorry.
He didn’t always have enough information about the risks.
Boasting about shaking hands with COVID patients was a bad idea.
‘Eat Out to Help Out’ seemed like a good idea at the time.
Matt Hancock did a good job.
Partygate was exaggerated.
Having been in intensive care with the virus himself, he understands the devastation it caused. Report by Blairm. 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.