Boris Johnson ‘fed culture of chaos in Number 10’ while Covid raged across UK

Boris Johnson ‘actively encouraged’ a chaotic culture inside Number 10 while thousands of Brits were dying at the height of the Covid crisis, according to a damning new report.

The official UK Covid-19 Inquiry has found the first lockdown in March 2020 could have been avoided if not for a ‘failure to act promptly and effectively’.

And if the lockdown had been introduced a week earlier – when it was widely understood to be inevitable – 23,000 lives might have been saved in England alone, it adds.

While all four national governments are criticised for their lack of urgency, the inquiry’s report paints a particularly scathing picture of Johnson’s administration.

It says: ‘There was a toxic and chaotic culture at the centre of the UK government during the pandemic, with the Inquiry hearing evidence about the destabilising behaviour of a number of individuals – including Dominic Cummings, an adviser to the Prime Minister.

‘By failing to tackle this chaotic culture – and, at times, actively encouraging it – Mr Johnson reinforced a culture in which the loudest voices prevailed and the views of other colleagues, particularly women, often went ignored, to the detriment of good decision-making.’

Cummings, then the top aide in Number 10, used ‘offensive, sexualised and misogynistic language’ – including describing a top female civil servant as a ‘c***’ in one Whatsapp message.

The inquiry also found he ‘strayed far from the proper role of a special adviser’ by seeking to make decisions that should have been the responsibility of Johnson.

Several witnesses told the inquiry that rather than tackling this behaviour, the then-PM ‘intentionally sought to foster conflict and a chaotic working environment to drive debate and assist his decision-making processes’.

The 800-page report – split into two volumes – is the second to be released by the Covid Inquiry, and focuses on the decisions made by those in power throughout the crisis and their consequences.

It says all four governments ‘knew enough to spur them into action’ by mid-February 2020 and describes the failure by all to ‘take a grip of the situation’ as ‘inexplicable’.

By March 12, the situation is described as ‘little short of calamitous’: ‘The Coronavirus Action Plan, which had taken three weeks to produce, was significantly out of date at the point of its publication.

‘Containment had failed. Community testing had ceased and the UK government and devolved administrations had no real understanding of the spread of the virus.

‘Any opportunity to get on top of the virus had been lost.’

Advisory restrictions announced on March 16 ‘should have been implemented much sooner’, it says.

If that had been the date when the first full lockdown was introduced, it adds, modelling suggests the death toll in England’s first wave would have been reduced by 48% or 23,000 fewer people.

According to the World Health Organisation, there have been more than 230,000 Covid-linked deaths in the UK since the outbreak of the disease.

The Inquiry places a strong focus on Johnson’s sense of optimism throughout the crisis and how it affected his decision-making and the effectiveness of government communications.

One highlighted example is the then-PM’s declaration that ‘we can turn the tide within the next 12 weeks’, made four days before he announced the first lockdown.

This was ‘never a realistic prospect’, it says, and the statement was ‘liable to build false belief among the public that the pandemic would be relatively short-lived’.

The Inquiry adds: ‘The final Covid-19-related legal restrictions in England were not lifted until 24 February 2022 – 101 weeks after Mr Johnson made this statement.’

Alongside Johnson and Cummings, several other top government figures are singled out for criticism in the report including Matt Hancock.

The Health Secretary ‘gained a reputation among senior officials and advisers at 10 Downing Street for overpromising and underdelivering’, it finds.

Concerns about his ‘truthfulness and reliability in UK government meetings’ were raised from June 2020, more than a year before he eventually resigned during controversy over an affair he had while social distancing rules were in effect.

Campaign group Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK said: ‘The evidence from the inquiry is clear, and while it is vindicating to see Boris Johnson blamed in black and white for the catastrophic mishandling of the pandemic, it is devastating to think of the lives that could have been saved under a different Prime Minister.

‘We now know that many of our family members would still be alive today if it weren’t for the leadership of Boris Johnson and his colleagues.’

The Covid-19 Inquiry, led by Baroness Heather Hallett, is now in its fourth year of investigating the UK’s response to the global pandemic.

Its first report, covering the UK’s preparedness ahead of the outbreak of the disease, was published in July last year.

A further eight modules, covering issues including young people and the care sector, are currently active. Reports for all but one are expected to be published by the end of this year.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.