Covid inquiry live: Martin Reynolds, key aide to Boris Johnson, to give evidence

Boris Johnson made it “impossible” for Britain to tackle Covid effectively, the cabinet secretary Simon Case told colleagues, accusing the prime minister of “changing strategic direction every day”.

The Covid inquiry was shown a WhatsApp message sent by Case to Dominic Cummings in which Case said he was at the “end of my tether” with the prime minister, who veered between wanting to impose stricter lockdown conditions and opening up the country — saying the UK was “pathetic” and needed a “cold shower”.

The inquiry was also shown extracts from Sir Patrick Vallance’s diary in which the government’s former chief scientific adviser accused Johnson of “ridiculous flip-flopping” and said the prime minister was “not exactly a consistent interlocutor”.

The frank exchanges were shown to Martin Reynolds, Johnson’s principal private secretary, and it was put to him by Huge Keith KC, the counsel to the inquiry, that if the views were “right”, it was a “deeply unfortunate position to be in”. Reynolds replied: “Yes.”

The email from Case, believed to have been sent in the autumn of 2020, said Johnson’s approach made good government impossible. “He cannot lead and we cannot support him under these circumstances,” Case wrote.

He also said the government had a “weak team” which “cannot succeed in these circumstances”, highlighting Matt Hancock and Gavin Williamson, then the health secretary and the education secretary respectively. “IT HAS TO STOP,” Case wrote in capital letters.

Martin Reynolds was principal private secretary to Boris Johnson as Downing Street struggled to tackle the burgeoning pandemic

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Lee Cain, the former Downing Street director of communications, will give a statement to the Covid inquiry today

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Top civil servant feared becoming Covid fall guy

The cabinet secretary in 2020 feared that Boris Johnson would “scapegoat” him for failures during the first phase of Covid (Chris Smyth writes).

Mark Sedwill wrote a WhatsApp message to Martin Reynolds, Johnson’s principal private secretary, saying: “If he’s going to try to scapegoat me, he can do so face to face.”

Sedwill also said that “sense was not prevailing” in efforts to dissuade Johnson from wanting to replace him as head of the civil service. Sedwill stood down in September 2020.

Asked what this meant, Reynolds said: “I believe that he was concerned that he was being blamed for the shortcomings of the first phase of Covid and felt, as a result, that that would be scapegoating.”

‘Dysfunctionality, indiscipline, chaos and misogyny’ inside No 10

‘No 10 was dysfunctional, misogynist and staff were “at war with themselves” at the height of Covid, according to Boris Johnson’s former principal private secretary (Chris Smyth writes).

Martin Reynolds revealed that he and Helen MacNamara, the deputy cabinet secretary at the time, wrote a report in May recommending reform of No 10 to address the government’s “suboptimal” handling of the first phase of Covid.

Hugo Keith KC asked whether the report showed “dysfunctionality, lack of discipline, chaos and a significant degree of misogyny”. Reynolds said: “I agree.”

Keith said the report set out “how meetings aren’t working, how people aren’t disciplined” with a “bad culture; a culture of chaos” in No 10, with “people at war with themselves, No 10 at war with someone”.

Reynolds said: “By this stage, the government machine is facing serious problems. And this piece of work by Helen MacNamara and I was designed to shine a light on that and to try and enable us to press ‘reset’ and get ourselves better placed for the next phase of Covid.”

He said reforms to No 10 structures had “reduced the superhero culture” but added: “In terms of the diversity of decision-making, in terms of the treatment of women, I agree. I think that remains an ongoing cultural issue, which I think we could have done more to address.”

Johnson met with Lebedev as Covid lockdown loomed

Boris Johnson held a personal meeting with Lord Lebedev, the Tory peer and owner of the Evening Standard, as the Covid crisis was overwhelming the government in March 2020 (Chris Smyth writes).

The Covid inquiry heard that Johnson had a phone call with Lebedev and then a private meeting on March 13 at a point when officials were drawing up plans for a lockdown.

Hugo Keith KC asked Martin Reynolds, Johnson’s principal private secretary, whether he thought the meeting was appropriate.

“Did you not ask him, ‘Why are you spending time on this, prime minister? We’ve got rather more urgent matters to deal with’?” Keith said.

Reynolds replied: “It’s for him to decide. I may have said, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ — and others may have said the same — but it’s up to the prime minister to decide.”

Johnson ‘blew hot and hold’ on Covid measures

Boris Johnson “oscillated” over whether to impose a lockdown, his former principal private secretary has acknowledged (Oliver Wright writes).

Martin Reynolds accepted it was “fair to say that the prime minister did, as it were, blow hot and cold on some issues”.

He reluctantly agreed with Dominic Cummings that the prime minister repeatedly changed his mind about imposing tougher measures between March 13 — when the government realised Britain was heading for disaster — and March 23, when full lockdown was imposed.

He blamed the failure not to identify the scale of the problem earlier on health officials, saying: “Fundamentally, the fact we got into that position is a result of a systemic failure and a failure of the people who are really tracking the situation most closely.”

Asked by Hugo Keith KC if he was aware of Johnson’s “oscillation”, Reynolds said: “I imagine so, yes.” Pushed to admit that he “couldn’t have forgotten”, Reynolds acknowledged: “Yes.”

However, Reynolds insisted it was not his role to advise Johnson on how to handle Covid. “I don’t think it’s my job to tell him what the answer is in a given situation,” Reynolds said. “My job is to make sure he gets the right advice and so he can reach to the appropriate decision.”

Government was not ‘crisis-ready’, Reynolds admits

Government departments were not “crisis-ready” because no one had tested their plans for dealing with a pandemic, Martin Reynolds has acknowledged (Chris Smyth writes).

Boris Johnson’s former principal private secretary said the prime minister did not want to create a “sense of panic” by stressing the threat of Covid, as he was reassured by officials that it was “under control”.

Only when Italy’s hospitals were overwhelmed at the beginning of March did senior figures in government start to realise that the UK was not ready for the coronavirus, he said.

“For a period of a month we have been assuming a certain number of things, including the plans are in place, whereas if you’d had a month to prepare, I think it would have been possible to deal with some of the issues which we then confronted in a slightly more orderly way,” he said.

“The thing which we didn’t do — and should have done, had we had had, as it were, more notice — was to actually properly test our plan.”

Reynolds said that while departments including the Treasury performed well, “if you look around, as it were, all the government departments, my impression — and I have said only an impression — is that they were not crisis-ready”.

He said departments’ lack of plan meant No 10 and the cabinet had to “come up with strategic direction and broker all these different things at the same time. And so you’ve got far too much being overloaded into the centre”.

Government plans were “inadequate to deal with the crisis we were confronted with”, he acknowledged.

Johnson out of the loop for crucial ten-day period

Hugo Keith QC asked why the prime minister was not kept informed

YOUTUBE

Boris Johnson was not provided with any government updates on the growing global Covid pandemic during a critical ten-day period in February 2020 (Oliver Wright writes).

Hugo Keith KC, counsel for the inquiry, challenged Johnson’s principal private secretary Martin Reynolds as to why no records could be found of any involvement of the prime minister in dealing with the emerging crisis between February 14 and 24.

Keith pointed out that this period coincided with the spring half-term, a time when Johnson was reportedly at Chequers, the prime minister’s Buckinghamshire retreat.

“There were no communications by email, by Cobra, by [red] box notes with the prime minister during that ten-day period on coronavirus. Why do you think that might have been?” Keith asked. “I cannot recall why,” Reynolds said.

Keith then asked: “Why is nothing being done in terms of keeping the prime minister in the loop for those ten days?” Reynolds replied: “I probably should have. Equally, I think there are many others who would normally have said we need to just keep the prime minister updated.”

Reynolds denies there was ‘chaos’ in No 10

Martin Reynolds has rejected suggestions there was “chaos” in No 10 at the start of the pandemic, saying it was simply “bedding down” a new working arrangement after the Conservatives’ election victory (Chris Smyth writes).

Boris Johnson’s former principal private secretary said that at the start of 2020 there was “a significant turning of the page” as the prime minister began planning for a decade in power.

“With a majority of 80, or whatever it was, there was a sense that the government had a five or ten-year time horizon to look at, and there was a really strong focus on the forward agenda,” Reynolds said, adding that No 10 was “trying to get used to what this new political reality meant”.

Asked about complaints from Dominic Cummings and Sir Patrick Vallance, then the government’s chief scientific adviser, about “chaos” in Downing Street decision-making, Reynolds said: “If we’re talking about January, February and probably the early bit of March, we are in my view, bedding down new arrangements.”

He insisted “the flow of information into No 10” was happening “in the normal way”.

Fear of Dominic Cummings ‘distracted senior civil servants’

Dominic Cummings had a list of civil servants he wished to oust, Martin Reynolds said

JONATHAN BRADY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Senior civil servants were distracted in the run-up to the Covid pandemic because they feared they were on a “s***-list” of people Dominic Cummings wanted to oust from their jobs (Oliver Wright writes).

Martin Reynolds, Boris Johnson’s principal private secretary, told the Covid inquiry there were a number of issues distracting senior officials in the months leading up to Covid.

He said this included “divergent internal politics” between Cummings and Johnson, who were pursuing different agendas in the government, and plans to axe a number of senior officials.

• Life after Boris Johnson — what Dominic Cummings did next

“There were quite a lot of other things taking place which meant that quite a bit of senior energy and attention was focusing on other things,” Reynolds said. “There was quite a bit of unease in the civil service around the so-called s***-list of people who were thought to be at risk in what was perceived to be a potentially much more muscular approach to the civil service in the period you’re talking about.”

He said clear divisions were beginning to emerge between Johnson and Cummings. “It was increasingly clear that the prime minister’s and Dominic Cummings’ agendas were not overlapping or were overlapped in part but quite different.”

Johnson ‘instinctively optimistic’ about Covid threat

The sense in Downing Street in early 2020 was that “plans were in place” for Covid, Reynolds said

JACK HILL FOR THE TIMES

Boris Johnson was “instinctively optimistic” but was told that the public health system was “gripping the challenge” of Covid at the start of 2020, according to his former principal private secretary (Chris Smyth writes).

“With the benefit of hindsight, it does appear that we should have been far more vigorously looking and testing our arrangements for what was coming,” Martin Reynolds admitted. “That would arguably have made a big difference when the crisis hit.”

Reynolds resisted suggestions that Johnson was biased towards optimism over Covid, saying that there was “a reassuring message coming up” into No 10 from official channels in February 2020.

He said “the tone of those communications” was “very much that the system was tracking this very carefully, the right processes were in place to manage that” and that “whilst there were potentially large challenges ahead … in a sense … the plans and the preparations were broadly in place”.

Reynolds said: “The overall sense was that the relevant parts of government were already, as it were, looking over exactly what needs to be done in preparations. And the overall message was that while there will be some difficult decisions to be taken, the government machine is prepared for that eventuality.”

Disappearing messages turned on after Covid inquiry was announced

Boris Johnson’s principal private secretary switched on WhatsApp’s “disappearing message” function on communications sent between key players at the point at when the prime minister announced the public inquiry into Covid (Oliver Wright writes).

Martin Reynolds claimed he could not “exactly recall” why he had done so but insisted it was not an attempt to hide information from the inquiry.

“I don’t believe it was intended to prevent the inquiry from having sight of [the messages],” he said.

Reynolds added that all information contained in the WhatsApp messages had been recorded “separately” in hard copies or emails.

Johnson ‘mad to think WhatsApp messages would stay private’

Martin Reynolds discussed the use of WhatsApp messages in No 10

The cabinet secretary Simon Case said Boris Johnson was “mad” if he thought his WhatsApp messages would not become public (Oliver Wright writes).

The Covid inquiry was shown messages sent between Case and Martin Reynolds, Johnson’s former principal private secretary, in which they discussed the potential for private exchanges on WhatsApp to be released as part of any future investigation into the pandemic.

Case wrote: “PM is mad if he doesn’t think his WhatsApps will become public via Covid inquiry.” But they concluded that Johnson “was not in the mood” for the discussion and it was put off for another day.

Reynolds told the inquiry not to put too much store by what he described as “ephemeral” WhatsApp messages sent by senior figures in Downing Street during the pandemic. He said the messages should be seen as conversations “in the corridor” rather than an important part of the decision-making process in No 10. Reynolds insisted decisions were taken “in the normal way” and were properly recorded.

His comments appear to be an attempt to limit the damage caused by a series of WhatApp messages released as part of the Covid inquiry.

Leaks ‘help those with an agenda’

The head of the Covid inquiry has warned people giving evidence against leaking witness statements and documents, saying that would help those “with an agenda” (Chris Smyth writes).

Baroness Hallett complained about a series of media reports previewing evidence due to be given this week, urging witnesses and lawyers to keep material private until she is ready to publish it.

The Times last week revealed that Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, had accused Boris Johnson of “Trump/Bolsonaro levels of mad and dangerous behaviour” in WhatsApp messages seen by the inquiry.

This morning the Daily Mirror reported that Helen MacNamara, the former deputy cabinet secretary, will say Johnson “never warmed” to Cobra meetings and that the government was “slow to move at every point”.

Hallett began today’s hearings by insisting: “It is for me to decide which witnesses to call, which documents to put into evidence and publish. I do so bearing in mind my obligations to fulfil my terms of reference fully, fairly independently and openly.”

“Fairness to witnesses and to those named in the documents requires that the materials are deployed and published in a logical order and allowing the witness to whom the materials relate and appropriate opportunity to comment,” she said. “It will only assist those who — unlike the inquiry, which investigates independently — have an agenda to pursue for this material to be shared before the inquiry has published it.”

The most anticipated evidence at the Covid inquiry this week is that of Boris Johnson’s erstwhile ally turned arch-critic Dominic Cummings. But arguably today’s session featuring lesser-known Downing Street officials will be more revealing.

We already know in excoriating detail what Cummings thinks of Johnson and his evidence tomorrow is likely to be more of the same.

But that is not true of Martin Reynolds who was arguably as important as Cummings in his role as Johnson’s principal private secretary.

Beyond his fame as Party Marty, organiser of the infamous “bring your own booze” bash in Downing Street, we have never heard Reynolds speak in public. Yet his role was pivotal, as Johnson’s link man to the civil service and the official who worked most closely with the prime minister throughout the entirety of the pandemic. He evidence, both written and oral, should provide a fascinating insight into how decisions were made in No 10 at the time and just how dysfunctional Johnson’s Downing Street became.

Unlike Cummings, Reynolds has no obvious axe to grind. It will make his evidence all the more interesting and important.