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‘DEEPLY SORRY’
Boris apologises to Covid victims and says he ‘should have twigged’ sooner how serious pandemic would become
The ex-PM will also address some of the wilder claims made against him
BORIS Johnson today apologised for the "pain and loss of life" experienced during the pandemic and admitted he should've acted sooner.
In his opening remarks at a showdown hearing of the Covid Inquiry, the ex-PM said: "Can I just say how glad I am to be at this Inquiry and how sorry I am for the pain and the loss and the suffering of the Covid victims."
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The ex-PM admitted he "underestimated" the threat of the virus and "should have twigged" once it gripped it Italy.
As he apologised, Boris was heckled by members of the public sitting in the Inquiry viewing gallery.
A sign was unfurled reading: "The Dead can't hear your apologies."
Protesters were ordered to leave the room by Chair Lady Hallet.
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Early in his testimony Boris admitted that "we got things wrong".
He confessed to the £100m Inquiry, which critics have slammed as a waste of time, that "unquestionably" things should've been done differently.
The ex-PM said: "Inevitably in the course of trying to handle a very, very difficult pandemic in which we had to balance appalling harms on either side of the decision, we may have made mistakes.
"I think we were doing our best at the time, given what we knew."
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He added: "With hindsight, it may be easy to see things that we could have done differently or it may be possible to see things that we could have done differently.
"At the time, I felt and I know that everybody else felt that we were doing our best in very difficult circumstances to protect life and protect the NHS."
Asked by inquisitor Hugo Keith KC if his decisions led to anyone dying from Covid who otherwise wouldn't have, Boris responded: "I'm not sure."
"Irrespective of government action, we have an elderly population, extremely elderly population," he said.
"We do suffer, sadly, from lots of Covid-related comorbidities and we are a very, very densely populated country.
"That did not help."
Asked about whether there was a toxic atmosphere in No10, Boris admitted his administration had a lot of "challenging and competing characters" but caveated that they got "an awful lot done".
The ex-PM confessed the "gender balance of my team should've been better".
And said "too many meetings were too male dominated".
Last month deputy cabinet secretary Helen McNamara, the second most senior official in government and the most senior woman, argued that she was operating in a system where women were not listened to or respected.
Boris brushed off a series of exasperated WhatsApp messages exchanged between senior officials Mark Sedwill and Simon Case.
In July 2020 Mr Case, the then-head official in Downing Street and now the Cabinet Secretary, said in a message to Sir Mark: "I've never seen a bunch of people less well-equipped to run a country."
Mr Johnson argued Whitehall chiefs would've made similar "pretty fruity" remarks about the Thatcher administration if their "unexpurgated" texts were available in the same way WhatsApp messages are.
The ex-PM added his texts were "ephemeral" and "tends to the pejorative and the hyperbolical".
"It was much more important to have a group of people who are willing to doubt themselves and to doubt each other," he said, justifying expletives used to describe members of the government.
"And I think that that was creatively useful rather than the reverse."
Underestimated threat
Boris told the Inquiry his government had "underestimated" the threat of Covid.
He admitted ministers were “not alarmed as we should have been”.
And described thinking about the virus as "a cloud on the horizon no bigger than a man's hand".
The ex-PM claimed: "I think that it would certainly be fair to say of me, the entire Whitehall establishment, scientific community included, our advisers included, that we underestimated the scale and the pace of the challenge. You can see that very clearly in those early days in March.
"We put the first peak too late, we thought it would be May/June - that was totally wrong. I don't blame the scientists for that at all.
"That was the feeling and it just turned out to be wrong."
Boris said he should have "twigged much sooner" when the pandemic took a stranglehold over Italy in February 2020.
He described how the scenes in Europe "rattled me".
"I remember seeing a note somewhere saying the fatality rate in Italy was 8% because they had an elderly population, I thought 'well My God, we've got an elderly population.
"This is appalling."
Underestimated views of the virus didn't change until February 2020 when there were warnings that 500,000 UK deaths would be a "reasonable worst case scenario".
"That was just a horrifying figure, and I couldn't believe it, I've got to be honest with you," Boris said.
No herd immunity
Mr Johnson told the Inquiry his government did not try and pursue a strategy of herd immunity.
He said ministers put in "a lot of work" trying to convince the public every life matters.
Boris insisted that instead, his strategic objective was to "protect the NHS and save lives by protecting the NHS".
He said: "Our strategy was to suppress the curve and to keep the R below 1 as much as we could.
"And we're going to use everything we could to do that. Herd immunity was going to be, we hoped, a by-product of that campaign which might be very long and very difficult."
On lockdowns, the ex-PM argued that restrictions such as gathering in groups weren't imposed earlier because of "the issues that were raised by going hard, going early".
Boris claimed he was "told repeatedly by both the CSA (Patrick Vallance) and CMO (Chris Whitty), that you risked bounce back and behavioural fatigue and yet more behavioural fatigue as a consequence of bounce back".
The ex-PM said it was difficult to approximate what the impact of moths long lockdowns would be.
He argued he didn't want to "take the gamble with public health", which explains why some of WhatsApps express doubt over shutting down the country.
Boris said: "I've got to tell you, in all honesty, I find it difficult to quantify the impact that those measures had, and the more we can do to explain why NPI (non-pharmaceutical intervention) measures of any kind why they're necessary to the satisfaction of everybody, the easier it will be for government next time and the more public buy in there will be."
The ex-PM told the Inquiry he didn't think lockdowns could've been avoided if he imposed other measures to stop the spread sooner.
"I think that the virus is extremely contagious, I think that it was going to describe a pretty nasty curve almost whatever we did.
"I'm not certain that we would have been able to avoid the extreme action that we eventually took by acting a few days earlier, but I would defer on that to scientists."
Bereaved families
Before the hearing Covid-bereaved families accused Boris of preparing to deliver a “grotesque distortion of the truth” to the Inquiry.
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At a press conference solicitor for the families Aamer Anwar insisted there was a “deadly culture of impunity, arrogance, incompetence” in No10.
Mr Anwar said: “He did let bodies pile high and the elderly were treated as toxic waste.”
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