Boris Johnson tells Covid inquiry he avoided engaging with devolved administrations during pandemic for political reasons as it happened – The…

11.59EST Closing summary

Thats the end of the days hearing. Heres a summary of the key events:

Boris Johnson said he avoided cooperating with devolved administrations for political reasons. The former prime minister was confronted with his own insistence that it would have been optically wrong for the UK prime minister to hold regular meetings with other devolved administration ministers. And he was asked about the claim of one of his key advisers that he refused to deal with the Scottish first minister during the pandemic because of a personal enmity despite the potentially disastrous effect that course of action could have on the effectiveness of anti-Covid measures in the UK.

The former prime minister was described as self-serving and unfit for power by bereaved families. As his messages showed today, even when he knew measures needed to be taken to protect lives, he delayed for fear of how it might impact his reputation with certain sections of the press, their spokesperson said.

No scientists attended meetings about the eat out to help out scheme before it launched, Johnson said. He said he had frankly assumed they were involved in talks about the scheme with the Treasury and he was surprised it was smuggled past them.

Johnson was shown repeated instances of Patrick Vallance attributing the phrase let it rip to him in contemporaneous diary entries. Johnson has denied he used the phrase. The inquiry was shown several diary entries from Vallance with recollections of Johnson using the phrase let it rip.

Updated at 12.07EST

After Johnsons second appearance at the inquiry, Becky Kummer, a spokesperson for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, says:

Our questioning today showed that Johnsons claims about the pandemic fall apart under the slightest scrutiny.

He did not get the big calls right, he failed to take the pandemic seriously in early 2020 leaving us brutally unprepared, and failed to learn from his mistakes meaning that the second wave had an even higher death toll than the first. The NHS was in fact severely overwhelmed, which he would know if he had met with the many thousands of bereaved families whose loved ones either couldnt get in to hospital, or couldnt get the treatment they needed once there. The UK was not in the middle of the pack, it suffered the second highest death toll in western Europe.

As his messages showed today, even when he knew measures needed to be taken to protect lives, he delayed for fear of how it might impact his reputation with certain sections of the press.

If his vanity hadnt taken priority over public health, many thousands of people, including my dad, might still be with us today. There are many lessons from the pandemic that might save lives in the future, but one of them is undoubtedly that someone as self-serving as Boris Johnson is not fit for power.

Updated at 11.55EST

Closing the days evidence, Johnson addresses Lady Hallett. He reprises comments briefed out to journalists before he started giving evidence.

He tells the inquirys chair that while its outside the scope of her work, he hopes she will be able to provide some sort of prod to the world to get the answer to the real origins of Covid.

Hallett reminds him that it does indeed fall outside of her terms of reference. And that he was the person who set those terms.

Updated at 11.54EST

Brian Stanton, for the British Medical Association, asks Johnson about the framing of the removal of Covid measures in July 2021 as bringing freedom. He asks Johnson to what extent the government prematurely gave the impression the pandemic was over, only to reintroduce restrictions within weeks.

Johnson says the progress made as part of the vaccination programme meant it was not inappropriate language.

Updated at 11.44EST

Samuel Jacobs, acting for the Trades Union Congress (TUC), asks about the former prime ministers view, expressed in 2021, that we cant have the bollocks of consulting with employees and trade unions. They need to all come back to work. All the malingering, workshy people.

He asks Johnson if his dismissive attitude was unbecoming of a prime minister.

Johnson claims his government did not ignore the difficulties facing working people. He adds that lockdowns were harming people on lower incomes, and that getting them back to work was the answer.

Jacobs presses him on the question of whether, by explicitly dismissing the prospect of consulting with workers representatives, he was driving an unhelpful culture. Not necessarily, Johnson tells the inquiry. He goes on to talk about the vaccination programme, saying this made it possible to get people back to work.

Jacobs asks why any of that means there should be no consultation with workers representatives. Despite being quoted as referring to such consultation as bollocks, Johnson claims he had nothing against consultation.

Instead, he claims, he was concerned about a drag anchor being put on getting people back to work.

Johnson says his primary concern was that, if consulted, working people might seek to maintain the more flexible working patterns he did not believe would benefit the economy.

He says he was worried people would be slow to acknowledge the progress towards returning to work the vaccination programme had made, and that there would be an inertia, and a desire to stay with the working from home pattern.

Updated at 11.40EST

Davies asks Johnson what lessons were learned on protecting people from domestic abuse from the first lockdown, and taken into subsequent lockdowns. Johnson talks at length about legislation his government introduced, which Davies reminds him is irrelevant because it did not refer to lockdown measures.

Johnson finishes by saying the government invested in telephone hotlines.

Updated at 11.25EST

Liz Davies KC, on behalf of several organisations that work against violence against women and girls, asks Johnson why his government explicitly failed to mention domestic abuse as a reason someone could leave their home before 2021. Johnson acknowledges that, in hindsight, ministers should have done more and done it more clearly.

Updated at 11.20EST

Returning to his answer, Johnson says given the misery of lockdowns for older people as well as younger it was reasonable to think about other approaches, and whether the continued lockdowns were effective. But, in the end, we had no alternative.

Updated at 11.12EST

Danny Friedman KC, acting for disabled peoples organisations, asks Johnson about his comments that older people were going to die anyway, have had a good innings, and should accept their fate, rather than destroying the economy. He asks if his choice of words represents shameful ageism.

Johnson disagrees, saying he was doing his best to reflect a debate that was very live, claiming that some older people would make these points to me.

Friedman is upbraided by the chair for using emotive language in his question that Lady Hallett says she did not approve.

Updated at 11.10EST

Menon asks why England pursued a more draconian approach than Scotland and Wales in respect of exempting younger children from certain restrictions. Johnson says the UK government was trying to reduce transmission.

Menon notes that the inquiry has heard no evidence the Scottish and Welsh governments approaches were more dangerous than that pursued by the UK government in England.

Updated at 11.00EST

Rajiv Menon KC is now addressing Johnson on behalf of several childrens rights organisations. He challenges Johnson on his claim that schools would be the last to close and the first to reopen, when he says pubs and hairdressers were reopened earlier.

Johnson says the government looked at extending the school year once schools could reopen, but ministers felt it made more sense given the normal school calendar to close them for the summer and reopen at the usual time.

Updated at 10.56EST

Anthony Metzer KC is questioning Johnson on behalf of long Covid groups. He is asked if, like his former adviser Dominic Cummings and the former health secretary Matt Hancock, he received advice on long Covid.

It is put to him that, while hed seen no evidence to support his scepticism and, indeed, had been pushed to acknowledge it by his advisers and colleagues, Johnson remained unconvinced it was a serious problem for a substantial amount of time.

Johnson said he was not suggesting it was not a problem, but that he wanted to see evidence of its extent. Asked about his assertion that the effects of long Covid were bollocks, he is asked why he did not simply ask for the NIHR report that had been published on it.

Johnson tries to claim that he did ask for some research and did eventually see evidence on long Covid but is finally pushed to acknowledge that he never asked to see the NIHR report.

Updated at 10.54EST

Johnson claims there was no medical reason for the disproportionate effects of the pandemic on people of colour, saying it must have been due to what he believes was their greater exposure to risk as a result of being more likely to be on the frontline.

Thomas pulls him up and asks if he was not aware of the role of institutional racism within the NHS, to which the former health secretary Matt Hancock referred, and that was set out in a Public Health England report. He asks the prime minister to clarify that it is his position that, as prime minister, he was unaware of that report.

Johnson tells the inquiry the evidence he saw did not support that conclusion.

Updated at 10.39EST

Leslie Thomas KC is now putting questions to Johnson on behalf of the Federation of Ethnic Minority Healthcare Organisations (FEMHO). He asks the former prime minister if he agrees its important to acknowledge the sacrifice of healthcare workers especially those from minority ethnic backgrounds as well as whether he owes them a personal debt after his own hospitalisations. Johnson agrees on both counts.

Thomas goes on to ask Johnson about Patrick Vallances view that the healthcare disparities seen during the pandemic were entirely foreseeable, and that the pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities. Why, then, did his government not act to mitigate the potential harsher effects of the pandemic on vulnerable and minority groups, Thomas asks?

Johnson tells the inquiry he was advised from the start that lockdowns were likely to be particularly harsh on people from disadvantaged backgrounds. He appears to suggest this was one of the reasons he was reluctant to go into lockdown.

He is asked to define the specific measures his government put in place to protect such people. Johnson says the government did not know the extent to which the virus itself would impact different groups differently in the run-up to the first national lockdown.

Thomas clarifies that he was asking about specific protective measures, before trying to move on. Johnson, talking over him, says it was difficult to put in place measures until the reasons for the disparities had been established.

Updated at 10.39EST

The inquiry is now rising for about 10 minutes.

Updated at 10.06EST

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Boris Johnson tells Covid inquiry he avoided engaging with devolved administrations during pandemic for political reasons as it happened - The...