Boris Johnson has admitted his government “vastly underestimated” the dangers posed by Covid-19 and displayed “incoherence” in early 2020, in his testimony to the public inquiry into the UK’s response to the pandemic.
The former prime minister on Wednesday repeatedly conceded that his administration failed to accept scientific evidence in the early weeks of the crisis, but struck a sombre and defensive tone following a slew of damaging claims by former top officials and ministers.
In the first of two days of evidence, Johnson said he should have “twigged much sooner” what impact coronavirus might have as scenes emerged from Italy in February 2020. But at the time, the threat was not escalated as “something of truly national concern”, he added.
The government “vastly underestimated” the scale of the infectiousness and lethality of Covid-19, said Johnson, who was in office between 2019 and 2022.
On March 12 2020, 10 days before the first lockdown was called, and when previous witnesses have said decisive action could have saved lives, Johnson conceded he was “bewildered” by evidence presented to him.
The government did not take worst-case scenarios seriously enough because it was operating under a “fallacious inductive logic”, based on the outcome of viruses such as Sars and Mers, he said.
“I don’t think we attached enough credence to . . . forecasts,” said Johnson, adding that there was “a certain amount of incoherence in our thinking” in March 2020.
Johnson’s concession that he was left “bewildered” by data on March 12 showing the NHS would be under enormous strain irrespective of a lockdown echoed comments from Sir Patrick Vallance, former chief scientific adviser, who described the former premier as being “bamboozled” by scientific modelling.
Johnson defended his decisions not to chair any meetings of the Cobra emergency committee until March 2020, and to order a full UK lockdown on March 23.
He said a national shutdown was the only “tool” available after Whitehall “systematically underestimated” Covid-19 transmission rates.
Last week, former health secretary Matt Hancock told the inquiry that a lockdown three weeks earlier “would have saved many, many lives”. Last month, it heard that senior advisers to Johnson recommended the move on March 14.
Asked by Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel for the inquiry, whether he believed ministers’ decisions led to more deaths during the pandemic, Johnson said he could not “give . . . the answer to that question”. He also said he did not recall Hancock calling for an immediate lockdown on March 13.
More than 50,000 deaths connected to coronavirus were recorded during the first wave. To date, Covid-19 has killed more than 227,000 people in Britain and infected many millions more.
The Covid-19 public inquiry is due to run until the summer of 2026, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak expected to appear before the end of this year.
Johnson began his evidence on Wednesday by apologising “for the pain and the loss and the suffering of the Covid victims”.
“So many people suffered . . . Inevitably in the course of trying to handle a very, very difficult pandemic in which we had to balance appalling harms . . . we may have made mistakes,” he added.
Asked whether decisions about when to implement lockdowns may have affected the number of excess deaths, Johnson said: “Given that other countries have excellent healthcare systems, and ended up statistically with more deaths . . . the answer is I don’t know.
“We have an extremely elderly population, we do suffer from many Covid-related comorbidities, and we are the second most densely populated in Europe,” added Johnson.
Excess deaths are the difference between deaths from all causes during the pandemic and the historic seasonal average.
Johnson disputed data presented by Keith during an earlier stage of the inquiry showing the UK recorded the second-highest death toll in Europe. He said he had seen different figures.
Since the second module of the inquiry, which covers “core political and administrative decision-making”, began in October, several former senior officials have strongly criticised Johnson’s leadership in oral and written evidence.
Lee Cain, former Downing Street head of communications, said Johnson had “oscillated” on key decisions and would “take a decision from the last person in the room”.
Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s former chief adviser, described him as a “shopping trolley”.
Helen MacNamara, deputy cabinet secretary between 2020 and 2021, last month said Number 10 under Johnson was “toxic”, “macho” and “contaminated by ego”.
Johnson dismissed claims that the characterisation of his leadership as incompetent was “extraordinary”.
“If you’d have had the views of the mandarinate about the Thatcher government in unexpurgated WhatsApps, m’lady, I think you would have found that they were pretty fruity,” he said.
Asked whether he was aware that people were not willing to work in his government because of its atmosphere, Johnson said he “didn’t see any sign of that”. But he admitted that the “gender balance should have been better”.