Covid inquiry: What are the key claims Boris Johnson made in his evidence?
Boris Johnson has appeared before the UK Covid-19 Inquiry to answer questions on his government's response to the pandemic.
The former prime minister was quizzed on Wednesday - the first of two days in which he will give evidence to the inquiry - and sought to defend his record in No 10.
Previous witnesses which the inquiry has heard from have accused Mr Johnson of being "bamboozled" by the science, and that he believed Covid was "nature's way of dealing with old people".
But while Mr Johnson admitted mistakes were made, he insisted "we did our level best" in "very difficult" circumstances.
Here, ITV News analyses the key claims Mr Johnson made during his appearance before the inquiry and the respective counter arguments.
'Toxic' culture within Downing Street
Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson dismissed suggestions he presided over a "toxic" atmosphere in Downing Street during the pandemic.
He told the inquiry's lead counsel, Hugo Keith KC, his administration had a lot of "challenging and competing characters", but it got "an awful lot done".
He said: "I would make a distinction between the type of language used and the decision-making processes of the government and what we got done.
"And I would submit that any powerful and effective government, and I think of the Thatcher government or the Blair government, has a lot of challenging and competing characters whose views about each other might not be fit to print, but who get an awful lot done - and that's what we did."
Mr Johnson denied any knowledge of particularly expletive WhatsApp messages between Number 10 officials, especially in response to allegations the language used represented a system unable to respond to the virus.
But he was later presented with messages which his former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, sent to him in May 2020, where former health secretary Matt Hancock was described as being "unfit" for the job.
Mr Johnson went on to defend the atmosphere in Downing Street as the "same" as anything that would be seen under other governments.
He said: "I think that actually what you're looking at, in all this stuff, is a lot of highly talented, highly motivated people who are stricken with anxiety about what is happening about the pandemic, who are doing their best and who, like all human beings, under great stress and great anxiety about themselves and their own performance, will be inclined to be critical of others.
"It would not have been right, if we'd had a load of WhatsApps saying, 'aren't we doing brilliantly folks, isn't this going well'. I think your criticisms might have been frankly, even more pungent."
Counter argument
Sajid Javid, who served in Mr Johnson's cabinet during the pandemic, disagreed with the former PM's stance, when he appeared as a witness earlier in the inquiry.
Asked whether in early 2020 there was a "toxic" and "dysfunctional" culture in Number 10 as described by other witnesses, Mr Javid said: "Yes, broadly.
"I think it was a widespread feeling among a lot of the political advisers working in Number 10, many ministers, the Number 10 operation collectively was quite dysfunctional."
Mr Javid's comments have been backed up by evidence from other senior officials, including former cabinet secretary Lord Mark Sedwill and former deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara.
Ms MacNamara told the inquiry that sexism in No 10 damaged the response to the pandemic.
WhatsApp messages, meanwhile, between Lord Sedwill and his successor Simon Case painted a picture of a "feral" Downing Street during the pandemic.
Mr Case, then-permanent secretary at No 10, wrote on June 5 2020: "It is like taming wild animals. Nothing in my past experience has prepared me for this madness.
"The PM and the people he chooses to surround himself with are basically feral."
Lord Sedwill replied: "I have the bite marks."
Excess deaths
Boris Johnson
Mr Johnson told the inquiry he was "not sure" whether government decision-making had led to "materially" a larger number of excess deaths as a result of Covid.
The term 'excess deaths' is defined as the number of people who have died and which are above the number that was expected.
Modelling for it uses five years of data from preceding years to estimate the number of recorded deaths expected in a given week.
Scientists regard excess deaths as a useful guide to help understand how a country’s pandemic preparedness and response affected the number of people who died from a virus.
The UK had one of the worst excess death rates from Covid in western Europe, between March 2020 and October 2023, according to modelling from Our World In Data.
But Mr Johnson questioned a statement from the inquiry's lead counsel that the UK was among the worst performers in Europe, saying the UK was "well down the European table and well down the world table".
Mr Keith responded that in "western Europe, we were one of the worst off, if not the second worst off".
Pressed again on why the UK had such a rate of excess deaths, he said: "Irrespective of government action, we have an elderly population, extremely elderly population.
“We do suffer, sadly, from lots of Covid-related comorbidities and we are a very, very densely populated country.”
Counter argument
Sir David Spiegelhalter, a British statistician, told ITV News that both Mr Johnson and Mr Keith were correct in their statements, but that the latter's was a fairer comparison as it looked at western Europe as opposed to the entire continent.
He said: "I think the fairest thing is to compare with western Europe because we're in a slightly, somewhat similar situation."
Sir David added: "If you look at western Europe, then if you look at excess mortality, adjusted for age, then we did badly.
"Italy and Greece were above us, but other countries were below us. So, we were high up in the league table for western Europe.
"But if you look at the whole of Europe, bring in eastern Europe, which did very badly particularly in the second wave, then we drop down to about halfway down, as Boris Johnson said."
Herd immunity
Boris Johnson
Mr Johnson told the inquiry the government did not pursue a herd immunity strategy and had to do "quite a lot of work" to clear up that misperception.
Herd immunity occurs when the majority of a population develops immunity against a contagious disease either through vaccination or due to a previous infection.
He said: "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 [reproduction number] below one 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."
Counter argument
Mr Cummings has previously dismissed suggestions senior government ministers did not consider herd immunity as a policy.
In 2021, he claimed that "herd immunity by Sep" was "literally the official plan in all docs/graphs/meetings until it was ditched".
England's chief medical officer, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, however, said the policy was never a government aim.
But he countered that "considerable confusion" ensued amongst the public by "people who had at best half-understood the issue".
Sir Chris said it would have been "inconceivable" to make herd immunity through natural infection a policy goal because "it would have led to extraordinarily high loss of life".
2020 half-term holiday
Boris Johnson
Mr Johnson rejected assertions that he took a long break in the February half-term of 2020 - weeks before the government introduced the UK's first national lockdown.
He said "there wasn't a long holiday that I took" and agreed he returned to Downing Street three times during that period.
He said he rang both Chinese President Xi Jinping - in part to discuss the origins of Covid "and to compare notes on what was happening". Mr Johnson also phoned then US president Donald Trump to discuss the same thing. Asked if "relatively little overall was done in terms of responding to this immediate crisis" between February 14 and the end of February 2020, the former PM said he was "working throughout the period".
He did admit though that his government "underestimated" the threat posed by Covid in the early days of the virus, saying ministers should have "twigged much sooner" the need for action.
Counter argument
Mr Cummings, contrary to the former PM's remarks, described it as "pretty insane" that Mr Johnson and other senior government figures were on holiday during the February half-term.
The former top advisor to the then PM made the comments during his appearance before the Covid inquiry in October, after it emerged there was a 10-day period - coinciding with half-term holidays - in which no notes on coronavirus were sent to Mr Johnson nor emergency Cobra meetings held.
Mr Cummings said that those in charge were not "beating the drum and saying 'we've got to get the PM back'", when he was challenged about the UK's response to Covid in that period.
Pressed on why he did not push Mr Johnson to return to Downing Street to deal with the impending crisis, Mr Cummings said it would have been "counter-productive".
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