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COVID inquiry: Johnson says it was ‘duty’ to weigh up whether lockdown would ‘do more harm than good’

All this week the COVID inquiry has been hearing evidence from top aides to Boris Johnson and senior civil servants about the period in early 2020 as the pandemic was landing on British shores.

Messages were shown in which foul language was used to and about ministers and civil servants, and a picture was painted of a government unprepared for the pandemic, as well as chaos in early 2020.

There were also notes and messages detailing frustration with Boris Johnson “oscillating” on decisions, debating whether a national lockdown was the right course of action, and suggesting elderly people should “accept their fate” so young people didn’t have to isolate (read the key moments here).

Extracts of the ex-PM’s witness statement have been shared by the COVID inquiry, and it details his thought process as he remembers it.

He writes that he would be “surprised” if he ever said he felt “manipulated or pushed into the first lockdown”, adding that he has “no recollection of this”.

But Mr Johnson goes on to say he did debate whether lockdown was the right course and defends that thought process.

He writes: “It is true that I have reflected (no doubt out loud and no doubt many times) about whether the lockdowns would do (and did do) more harm than good.

“I believe that it was the duty of any pragmatic and responsible leader to have such a debate, both with himself and with colleagues.”

He goes on to say there were “no good choices” for the government and they had to “weigh up the harms that any choice would cause”.

He admits he was “very worried about the economic harm” caused by COVID measures such as lockdown and “whether it would do more damage to the country than the virus itself”.

But he adds: “I always attached the highest priority to human life and public health.”

In a later section, he also concedes that it is “possible” that earlier interventions “could have avoided the need for a national lockdown”, but adds: “I cannot think what they might have been.”