Families who lost loved ones told Boris Johnson "the dead can't hear your apologies" as he said sorry for pandemic mistakes.
Appearing at the Covid Inquiry, the former PM admitted his government "underestimated" the threat posed as he missed key meetings when the virus hit. "I look at all this stuff, in which we seem so oblivious, with horror now, we should have twigged, we should collectively have twigged much sooner... I should have twigged," he said.
Mr Johnson was disrupted by protesters as he began his two-day interrogation at the Covid Inquiry. Mr Johnson said the Government "inevitably got some things wrong", but he insisted: "We did our level best."
At the start of his evidence, he said: âCan 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 Covid victims.â There was then a disruption in the room when four women held up signs that read: "The dead can't hear your apologies".
The inquiry heard that around 5,000 WhatsApp messages are missing from a mobile phone used by Mr Johnson during the early months of the pandemic. He insisted this was because of technical error as he said they had not been deleted intentionally.
Boris Johnson attacks Rishi Sunak's failure to send fighter jets to Ukraine
The former Prime Minister is giving evidence under oath over two days on his leadership during the crisis after damning testimony from aides, politicians and scientists about the toxic atmosphere in Downing Street.
Read all the developments as they happened in our liveblog below
Boris Johnson has admitted to not attending key meetings and going on holiday as Covid hit.
The former PM admitted he should have "twigged much sooner" about the danger the country faced as he was grilled over his botched response.
On an explosive day at the Covid Inquiry, he admitted not attending key meetings and going on holiday days after being warned the virus would “sweep world”.
Read our full report here.
Boris Johnson has been booed by bereaved families outside the Covid Inquiry.
As he left for the day following his marathon evidence session, the former PM faced a wave of heckles and jeers. One person shouted: "Liar."
The PM managed to avoid protesters on his way as he arrived at 7am three hours before the hearing began.
Boris Johnson attempts to defend partygate and Brexit on Nadine Dorries Show
(AFP via Getty Images)The Covid Inquiry has finished its evidence session for the day.
Boris Johnson will be back tomorrow for a second day of evidence.
A number of senior aides and scientists have complained about Matt Hancock's competence as Health Secretary - saying he often overpromised or lied to people about the reality of the situation.
Boris Johnson said Mr Hancock was "doing a good job" in very difficult circumstances and he felt it wouldn't be worth the disruption.
He denies Dominic Cummings's claim that he kept Mr Hancock on as a sacrificial lamb who could take the fall for the Government's failings in a future Inquiry.
The Inquiry has previously seen messages from Dominic Cummings where he claimed he tried to sack the senior civil servant Helen MacNamara and complained No10 was “dodging stilettos from that c***”.
Boris Johnson was challenged on why he didn't call this out by Inquiry lawyer Hugo Keith.
Mr Johnson said he called her to apologise for the messages.
You can read more about Ms MacNamara's evidence here.
The Inquiry has seen evidence that Boris Johnson repeatedly compared Long Covid to Gulf War syndrome, a term referring to unexplained illnesses among veterans of the 1991 war.
One note shown to the Inquiry shows him describing Long Covid as "b*******" and "Gulf War syndrome stuff".
The ex-PM said: "The words I scribbled in the margins of submissions about Long Covid have obviously been publicised and I'm sure they have caused hurt and offence to a huge number of people who do indeed suffer from that syndrome."
"I regret very much using that language," he adds, and suggests he should have thought that the papers would be published.
Boris Johnson was asked about criticism from former top civil servant Helen MacNamara that there was a "striking lack of humanity or perspective about how people or families actually lived".
Mr Johnson agreed that there was "some force" in her criticism but rejects the idea that decisions were made that ignored women for example.
He admitted: "I think sometimes we didn't think hard enough about the impact of lockdown on different groups."
The ex-PM said that was a reason why he was so worried about imposing later lockdowns.
Boris Johnson asked Michael Gove to chair regular meetings with the First Ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - partly because he was reluctant to do it himself, the Inquiry hears.
Evidence from his witness statement show he was worried about leaks from the other leaders. It also suggests he didn't want it to look like it was a meeting of equals.
Hugo Keith KC said: "You took the view that optically, it was wrong to be seen to be meeting with the First Ministers because it might look like a kind of mini EU."
Mr Johnson replied: "I certainly thought that was a risk and from time to time, I felt that the coherence of the UK message was being undermined."
However he said with hindsight, he should perhaps have engaged with the devolved administrations more.
Inquiry lawyer Hugo Keith reads a nugget from Rishi Sunak's witness statement - which we have not yet seen.
He says the-then Chancellor was "frustrated that there was, as he sees it, over compliance with the stay-at-home messaging".
Boris Johnson said he wanted people to have some freedom but he also didn't want to lecture people who were a bit more cautious.
WhatsApps between Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock show the former Health Secretary saying "we've gone fast on releasing lockdown" and expressing alarm about the winter amid rising cases.
He says in the message that the Government must balance opening up quickly and exposing the NHS to risks in the winter.
Mr Johnson told the Inquiry that he read this as Mr Hancock asking for more money for the NHS as all Secretaries of State do.
Boris Johnson was confronted by texts from aides complaining he couldn't make up his mind about lockdown in mid March 2020.
The messages between Dominic Cummings and the-then No10 comms chief complain "he's melting down" and back to "Jaws mode w***".
Mr Johnson says he was trying to "test the policy" rather than dithering.
Ex-Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the Inquiry that he said a lockdown was needed on March 13 - 10 days before the restrictions were finally announced.
But he was unable to provide any evidence of this.
The Inquiry lawyer Hugo Keith challenged him on it last week as his email he claimed proved this actually suggested a "suppression strategy" which he said was not the same thing. It also wasn't mentioned in his Pandemic Diaries book.
Boris Johnson today said he didn't remember the conversation but he said it was a long time ago.
Boris Johnson says that mass sporting events should have been abandoned in March 2020 - a decision that was controversial at the time.
The Cheltenham Festival on March 10 and Liverpool's fixture against Athletico Madrid on March 11 were both allowed to go ahead, with tens of thousands of people packed together despite the spread of the virus.
Mr Johnson said the advice at the time was people would crowd into pubs instead of being outside in a stadium which "sounded reasonable at the time".
But he added: "With hindsight, as a symbol of government earnestness rather than just being guided by the science, we should perhaps have done that."
The Inquiry has been shown WhatsApp exchanges discussing the controversial 'herd immunity' idea.
Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance has since told the Inquiry he regretted mentioning it in a media interview as it implied the Government wated the virus to spread unchecked through the population.
In messages with Vallance and Boris Johnson on March 14, Matt Hancock said it suggested the Government had "given up fighting" the virus.
Vallance said they should "move off talking about it" and Mr Johnson said he agreed, adding: "Some on the team were suggesting last week that we actively need a proportion of the pop to be infected. Civil service need to grasp."
Mr Johnson told the Inquiry today that a lot of work had to be done to clear up the misperception that this was Government strategy.
"Our objective was to protect the NHS and save lives and to save lives by protecting the NHS - that was our objective. 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."
Boris Johnson is shown a message from his former aide saying he needed to stop telling the public it was "business as usual".
Dominic Cummings made the assessment during a discussion with scientists - warning that it was unhelpful in preparing people for restrictions that were likely to be needed.
The ex-PM says he doesn't remember this.
The Covid Inquiry is back after it's lunch break and attention returns to the run up to the first lockdown.
Boris Johnson now accepts he shouldn't have boasted about shaking hands 'with everybody' on a visit to London's Royal Free Hospital on March 1, despite there being Covid patients on the wards.
Scientists were telling the Government at the time that they should advise against hugging and shaking hands to prevent the spread of Covid.
Mr Johnson today told the Inquiry: "I shouldn't have done that in retrospect and I should have been more precautionary but I wanted to be encouraging to people."
Boris Johnson has admitted he should have "twigged much sooner" when the pandemic took hold in Italy in February 2020.
The Inquiry was shown an email from Mr Johnson's former private secretary Imran Shafi, who wrote on February 24 2020: "At some point soon, I'd like to start exposing the PM to the potential decisions he might have to take in short order on this - at the moment it's been fairly abstract with him I think".
Asked what his general level of knowledge was at this point, Mr Johnson said: "My memory now is that the scenes from Italy really 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 this is appalling'.
"And my instinct was 'this cannot possibly be be right, this number'.
"I look at all this stuff, in which we seem so oblivious, with horror now, we should have twigged, we should collectively have twigged much sooner... I should have twigged.
The inquiry is now taking a break until 1.40pm.
Boris Johnson said in a note at the end of February the "biggest damage" that could be done is by an "overreaction" to Covid.
He also asked: "What's the strategy? When are we going to take some decisions on what evidence?"
He tells the Inquiry at the end of February 2020 he had a discussion with the CMO about non-pharmaceutical measures and other measures to contain the spread of the virus.
"I don't think the concept of lockdown - or even the word lockdown - had even emerged yet".
A Cobra meeting around the same time - which the PM didn't attend - was also told the "reasonable worst case scenario was close to becoming reality".
The four women who were removed from the Covid Inquiry have explained why they disrupted Boris Johnson. They held up signs saying "the dead can't hear your apologies" as the former PM said sorry at the beginning of today's hearing.
Speaking outside Dorland House in west London, Kathryn Butcher, 59, from London, said: “Personally, I won't ever accept his apology for the way he handled the pandemic. I was never going to accept it.” She was holding a photo of her sister-in-law Myrna Saunders, 56, and a photo of Jake Corser, 15, a friend’s son, who were both lost to Covid.
“Jake was a perfectly healthy 15-year-old who was just about to finish school and looking forward to going to college, planning out what he was going to do for his future. And he cruelly had that cut short in July 2020,” she said.
Kirsten Hackman, 57, from south London, who had a photo of her mum Sìne Watt, 85, who had a fall at the end of March 2020 on the Isle of Wight. “She was admitted to hospital and she called me on the phone before the ambulance came and said: ‘I don't want to go into hospital. I’ll catch the virus and I'll die.’ She was in hospital for four weeks, and after four weeks, when they were looking at discharging her, she tested positive. And she died a week later. So she left that hospital in a hospital gown and was put into a body bag. That sealed body bag was put into a coffin,” she said. “She was 85 but she still had so much living to do.”
Speaking about Mr Johnson, she said: “His apologies today have just been empty words. He needs to be honest and tell the truth and I don't think we're going to get that.”
Fran Hall, 62, from Denham, Bucks, was holding a photo of her husband Steve Mead, 65, who died three weeks after they married in September 2020. “He caught Covid at a hospital appointment, we think, and was taken to hospital and was given a ceiling of care that meant he wouldn't get given a ventilator because he had a diagnosis of prostate cancer. And eventually he just couldn't cope with the CPAP [breathing aid] any further and the doctors withdrew treatment and he died,” she said.
“I think we all feel very strongly that Mr Johnson is trying very hard to control the narrative and we didn't want him to be grandstanding in the hearing centre in the hearing room today making an apology to bereaved people and then carrying on giving his evidence without us making our feelings heard.”
Ms Hall said Mr Johnson was a “failed leader”, adding: “We are one of the richest countries in the world and we have one of the worst death tolls so yeah.”
(AFP via Getty Images)Boris Johnson failed to attend a crucial meeting of the Cobra emergency committee when the Chief Medical Officer warned coronavirus could become a pandemic.
Minutes shown at the Covid Inquiry showed Professor Sir Chris Whitty raised concerns the virus could spread to the UK on January 29, 2020.
Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel, asked Mr Johnson: “The question is why were you the Prime Minister not being told directly this is a virus, which if it escapes China will result in a pandemic. “There is information already that it has a very serious fatality rate and a very serious hospitalisation rate. Why was that? Basic light bulb information not brought to your attention so that you can see the true nature of this emerging crisis.”
Mr Johnson, who missed five Cobra meetings on Covid before eventually chairing his first one in March 2020, said: “I can't give you the exact reason why the detail of the Cobra was not brought to my attention.”
Minutes of the meeting on January 29, 2020 recorded: “The CMO said that the UK planning assumptions were based on the reasonable worst case scenario. There were two scenarios to be considered. The first was that the spread was confined within China, the second was that the spread was not limited to China and there would be a pandemic like scenario, with the UK impacted. The second scenario was plausible but it may take weeks to months.”
Boris Johnson was warned in a WhatsApp in February 2020 that coronavirus was probably "out of control" and would "sweep world".
Senior No10 adviser Dominic Cummings made the stark warning in a message to the PM on February 6. He wrote: "Need briefing on corona tmrw. Chief scientist told me today it's prob out of control now an will sweep world. Will be major comms exercise."
Lord Lister, the No10 chief-of-staff, the next day added: "The COBRA meeting was I think clear that China is probably loosing (sic) it and once it reaches us it will not peak for three months. Dom is right the Comms is key and we have to look at all times that we have a plan and thought it through."
Mr Johnson replied saying: "Yes please. Need to talk about coronavirus comms at 9".
Despite the warnings, a week later Mr Johnson began a 10-day holiday and received no updates on Covid between February 14 and 24.
Read the full WhatsApp exchange.
Boris Johnson is pressed on whether the government "failed to wake up" and recognise the scale of Covid.
The ex-PM says at the time "we underestimated the scale and pace of the challenge and you can see that very clearly in those early days in March through to the sequence of lockdowns".
"We were all collectively underestimating how fast it had spread in the UK - we put the first peak too late. I don't blame the scientists for that but that was the feeling. It just turned out to be wrong".
The Inquiry is now turning to the moments before the first Covid lockdown.
Matt Hancock claims to have called the PM on four occassions in January 2020 - trying "to alert" the PM.
"I certainly conversation on the 7 January - I remember saying to him keep an eye on it," Mr Johnson says.
"In that period January until the end of February Covid was pretty much like a cloud on the horizon."
"In government wasn't yet being escalated to me of truly national concern".
Mr Johnson says Cobra meetings are a "regular occurence" in Government. "The possibility of a Covid pandemic was not something that had yet been... it hadn't really broken on the political world... as something as real as potential of a real national disaster".
He says he was aware Matt Hancock was "handling it". "My instructions to him were to keep me posted".
"By the end of February I'm getting anxious about what we're doing".
Former Chief Scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance said in his diaries the PM argued to "let it all rip" and hit out at his lack of leadership in October 2020. He also said he was "all over the place and inconsistent".
Mr Johnson says it's "wholly to be expected" as this was a period of a resurgence of the virus. "At this particular moment - my anxiety was we were going to have to do the same thing over and over again".
"I think what those notebooks reflect is the deep anxiety of a group of people doing their level best and cannot see an easy solution".
