Johnson says Covid inquiry that criticised chaos in his government ‘muddled’

Boris Johnson has dismissed the inquiry report that found chaos in his government, and that a failure to take Covid-19 seriously cost 23,000 lives in the pandemic’s first wave, as “muddled”.

The Covid inquiry found that Mr Johnson presided over a “toxic and chaotic” Downing Street culture that undermined efforts to deal with the pandemic.

Baroness Heather Hallett’s report on the government response to Covid accused Mr Johnson of being too “optimistic” in his outlook in the early months of 2020.

He called the inquiry “hopelessly incoherent” in a post on X and said it failed to answer what he called the “two big questions” on Covid – where the virus came from, and whether lockdowns were worthwhile.

The former prime minister, who set up the inquiry, said in his newspaper column that the report should be filed “vertically” and that those involved in the pandemic response at the time were “doing our level best”.

He wrote in the Daily Mail: “Some judge has just spent the thick end of £200 million on an inquiry, and what is the upshot?

“She seems, if anything, to want more lockdowns. She seems to have laid into the previous Tory government for not locking down hard enough or fast enough – just when the rest of the world has been thinking that lockdowns were probably wildly overdone.”

The inquiry found that the first and second lockdowns of the pandemic were not inevitable, but the government was left with no choice after failing to implement measures such as social distancing and household quarantine earlier.

Not imposing any lockdown at all when it became apparent there was no choice would have “led to an unacceptable loss of life”.

However, bringing in lockdown a week earlier, on March 16, would have cut deaths in the first wave to July “by 48% – equating to approximately 23,000 fewer deaths” in England, according to modelling, the report said.

On this, he said the inquiry “seems to be totally muddled” and argued that he told people to self-isolate if they had symptoms, work from home and avoid inessential contact a week before the first lockdown.

He added: “I am of course grateful to Lady Hallett for her labours, which have clearly been extensive, and I repeat that I remain full of regret for the things the government I led got wrong and full of sympathy for all those who suffered – whether from the disease or from the steps we took to protect the population.

“All I can say is that everyone involved was doing our level best, under pretty difficult circumstances, to get it right and to save lives.”

He appeared to suggest that along with Donald Trump’s new plan for Ukraine, the Covid report should be shredded.

“In the name of freedom, we need to file the 28-point Ukraine plan vertically – and the same, I am afraid, goes for the Hallett report into Covid,” he wrote.

Former cabinet minister Lord Michael Gove has apologised in response to the report.

“I want to, on behalf of the government and the Conservative party, to apologise for mistakes that were made during that period,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

But he added that in a crisis “the business of government can’t be carried out in the manner of a Jane Austen novel”.

Boris Johnson’s sister Rachel called the report “vindictive rubbish” that painted the former prime minister as a “Grim Reaper” in comments on her LBC show.