Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson oversaw a toxic, chaotic and dithering response to the Covid-19 pandemic, with a delay to locking the country down resulting in about 23,000 more deaths, a report by a public inquiry concluded.
The UK recorded more than 230,000 deaths from Covid, a similar death rate to the United States and Italy but higher than elsewhere in western Europe, and it is still recovering from the economic consequences.
An inquiry, which Mr Johnson ordered in May 2021, delivered a blistering assessment of his government's response to Covid, criticising his indecisive leadership, lambasting his Downing Street office for breaking their own rules and castigating his special adviser Dominic Cummings.
‘Toxic and chaotic culture’ in Government
"There was a toxic and chaotic culture at the centre of the UK government during the pandemic," the inquiry chair, former judge Heather Hallett, said in her report.
She said Mr Cummings used "offensive, sexualised and misogynistic" language as he "poisoned" the atmosphere in Downing Street.
Ms Hallett said Mr Johnson had failed to appreciate the seriousness of the virus after it emerged at the start of 2020, believing it would amount to nothing and was distracted by other government business, with the UK at the time bogged down in talks over its departure from the European Union.
"Mr Johnson should have appreciated sooner that this was an emergency that required prime ministerial leadership to inject urgency into the response," the report said.
Ms Hallett said the Covid threat was initially treated as a "health issue", adding it was "surprising" that a government Cobra meeting was not chaired by Mr Johnson until 2 March.
Instead, he failed to appreciate the urgency of the situation "due to his optimism it would amount to nothing", his "scepticism arising from UK experiences of infectious disease" along with "misleading reassurances" from the UK’s Department of Health, headed by Matt Hancock.
When he appeared before the committee in 2023, Mr Johnson said his government had been too complacent and had "vastly underestimated" the risks, saying he understood the public's anger.
Ms Hallett said by the time Johnson announced a lockdown on 23 March it was too little, too late, a repeated criticism she levelled at the British government and the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Had the UK locked down just a week earlier on 16 March, as the consensus of evidence said it should, the number of deaths in the first wave up to July would have been reduced by about 23,000 or 48%, the report concluded.
A failure to act sooner again as cases rose later in the year also led to further national lockdowns, it added.
Ms Hallett said the inquiry recognised Mr Johnson had to wrestle with profound decisions, but said he repeatedly changed his mind, failing to make timely decisions despite a clearer understanding of the virus.
Elsewhere, the report criticised the theory of "behavioural fatigue" - the concept that the public would not adhere to restrictions over a long period of time - which was promoted by England's chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty.
Ms Hallett said the behavioural fatigue theory has "no grounding in behavioural science".
On the ability to test for Covid-19, the report was highly critical of the UK's lack of testing capacity which meant officials had "no real understanding of the spread of the virus", with "dire" consequences.
After imposing the first lockdown, the government also did not have a strategy for exiting it, even though this "should have been at the forefront of decision-makers' minds".
Later on, there was also "insufficient attention" given to the prospect of a second wave of the virus.
The weakness of the restrictions in the middle of 2020 and Mr Johnson's "oscillation" enabled the virus to continue spreading at pace, and ultimately resulted in a second lockdown.
