Boris Johnson breaks silence on Covid 'nightmare'

Boris Johnson has said he initially thought closing schools during the pandemic was a "nightmare idea", as he faced questions about the impact of Covid on children and young people. Giving evidence to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, the former prime minister said he was "very much hoping that we wouldn't have to close schools - I thought it was a nightmare idea", before it became clear that other countries were taking such steps.

However, he denied that the Government had failed to plan for such measures and disagreed with former education secretary Sir Gavin Williamson's testimony last week, which suggested just a day of planning went into the closures, with no contingency plans in place. Mr Johnson was also later questioned about the moment that left him in a "homicidal mood", when he considered sacking Sir Gavin.

He told the inquiry: "I'm not sure I agree with the idea that there was no planning for school closures, because if you look at the sequence from February onwards, it's clear that Sage (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) is talking about the possibility, the Cabinet is discussing it in March. Certainly I remember the subject coming up repeatedly."

Former Department for Education schools director-general Sir John Coles previously told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry it was an "extraordinary dereliction of duty" for the DfE not to plan for school closures earlier in March 2020.

But Mr Johnson said: "It felt to me as though there had been abundant discussions about closing schools, and it felt to me, to the best of my recollection, as though the department was aware of this, and I assumed that they were planning for it.

"When I look at that document of March 15, it seems to me to suggest that a great deal of work and thought had gone into the key issues. So I'm not, respectfully, I'm not inclined to accept the idea that people fell down gravely in their duty.

"I think people were overwhelmed by the speed of events and when the facts changed they had to change policy and I had to change policy."

The former Tory leader said he would accept the "full horror" of coronavirus was "slow to dawn on government".

He added: "Don't forget, we didn't know the effect this disease had on kids. We didn't know much about the transmissibility of the disease. There were all sorts of things that were simply unknown and difficult to plan for.

"And the thing was moving very fast. And from the point of view of Number 10, we were focused very much on trying to stave off, trying to avoid an appalling public health crisis. And we were focused on getting enough ventilators, on getting enough PPE, trying to avoid a significant number of casualties.

"And I think it's important for the inquiry to focus, to remember that at the time that the school closures were first mentioned, they were seen as something you put in at the peak of the pandemic, and we didn't think we were yet at the peak of the pandemic."

Mr Johnson was also questioned about decisions in the summer of 2020, when major school exams were cancelled.

He told the inquiry he regrets "that we got the wrong initial model" for replacing exams, which saw an algorithm used to determine grades. This was later replaced by teacher assessments.

Asked by inquiry counsel Clair Dobbin KC if he recognised what happened with assessment during summer 2020 was "really damaging" to children, he said: "We had to find a way of adjudicating on the academic achievement of the kids that didn't involve an exam.

"And Ofqual came up with this system. I was not expert enough to comment on it, on whether it was viable or not, but plainly it let down a lot of kids whose grades didn't reflect their abilities and their achievements.

"And so to answer your question, yes, I regret very much. Amongst the things I regret and I take responsibility for, is that we got the wrong initial model for how to have a substitute exam. What I would say in our defence is it wasn't easy to come up with the right model."

During Mr Johnson's evidence on exam results, the inquiry was shown a WhatsApp message from the former prime minister to his then-chief adviser Dominic Cummings in which he said he was "back in chequers and in a thoroughly homicidal mood".

He said: "We need a plan for the dept of education. We need a perm sec and we need better ministers and quite frankly we need an agenda of reform. We can't go on like this. I am thinking of going into number ten and firing people."

While the permanent secretary at the Department for Education left his job, Mr Johnson did not sack Sir Gavin.

The former prime minister told the inquiry: "I think if I look back at my handling of my beloved colleagues over the three-and-a-bit years I was in government, I can think of all sorts of changes I might have made.

"But I don't think there's any point in speculating about it now, except I think that on the whole, given the difficulties that we faced, I think that the department under Gavin did a pretty heroic job in trying to cope with Covid, and that was my judgment."

Mr Johnson also told the inquiry that school closures should be "a measure of last resort" in tackling future events like the Covid pandemic.

He was asked whether he would accept "the reality was the government didn't consider children as rights-holders in their own right, and were seeing them through the lens of virus transmission and prioritising enforcement of the rules".

Mr Johnson replied: "I think that looking back on it all, the whole lockdowns, the intricacy of the rules, the rule of six, the complexity, particularly for children, I think we probably did go too far and it was far too elaborate. Maybe we could have found a way of exempting children."