WUpon arriving on Wednesday, Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, avoided many of the relatives who gathered outside Britain's Covid-19 public inquiry site in west London for his much-anticipated appearance.
Things didn't go well in the December cold.
“It's another kick in the teeth,” said Charlotte Lynch, 32, from Kent, who found herself among a crowd of families holding hundreds of photos of their lost loved ones. 'He came before seven in the morning because he doesn't want to look at us. That's all I wanted: for him to see my mother's photo.”
Lynch held a framed photo of 67-year-old Sue Lynch, who died from hospital-acquired Covid-19 during the second wave in March 2021 – after Johnson faced huge criticism for delaying measures to stop the spread of the new , to limit more virulent variants.
She hadn't slept all night “because I don't think we're going to get what we want – I think he's going to lie again.”
Laminated photographs of dead relatives were hung along the railings and a van was parked outside the Paddington venue with a poster featuring the faces of 53 people and the words “the bodies piled high” – a reference to a phrase Johnson allegedly used when he argued against further lockdowns in the autumn of 2020.
The cross-examination of the former prime minister comes 18 months after he announced the statutory public inquiry.
Many of the 7,000 members of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group have been waiting for this moment because they feared the government's response in spring 2020 was flawed. The investigation covers many aspects of the response, but relatives were informed. Wednesday focused on what Hugo Keith KC, counsel to the inquiry, has called “the grim metric that matters most”: deaths.
Few seemed to have much hope for closure or revelation from Johnson's two-day performance.
“I don't think Johnson should take an oath, I think he should take a lie detector,” says Alan Handley, 72, from Staffordshire, who lost his wife Susan, 69, in November 2020. He followed the investigation. like it's a full-time job.
His daughter, Victoria Morgan, said of the revelations from the investigation so far: “It's really painful – the constant rubbing of salt in our wounds, confirming what we already know: the lies.”
Louise Brown, who lost her 39-year-old sister, had traveled from Newcastle. She held a sign that read: “Johnson partied while people died.” She was unable to see her sister before her death in February 2021 as she observed social distancing restrictions that were being flouted in Downing Street.
“I'm just so mad at him,” she said. “I feel like an idiot. Why didn't I just go? I'm a healthcare worker, so I followed the rules. I hope for a sincere apology, but with him I doubt that will happen.”
Kathryn Butcher, 59, from Wimbledon, brought a laminated photo of her friend's son, Jake Corser, 15, who died in July 2020, and one of her sister-in-law Myrna Saunders, 56, who died in March 2020.
“There were children who died despite what Johnson says is a disease of the elderly,” she said.
To date, Covid-19 has claimed more than 233,000 lives in Britain. 58% of This concerns people aged 80 and over, while less than 8% (about 18,000) were among people under 60.
“Today is probably the hardest day yet for me because of the (first) late lockdown,” Butcher said. “If it had come when it was supposed to come, there was a chance (Myrna) wouldn't have contracted Covid. That was Johnson's decision. I think today is going to be emotionally tough. I want to know the truth. I want to make sure my family is protected from this happening again.”
Lawyers representing the relatives said they had three key questions for Johnson, who resigned as MP in June after an investigation into the Partygate scandal found he had misled parliament.
They would question why, despite scientific advice, there was indecision and delay in lockdown, leading to more deaths; whether he viewed older people as expendable; and whether he agreed with his former health secretary Matt Hancock that the first lockdown came too late.
Johnson's team has already said extensively that he will admit that his “fundamental faith that everything would be fine” was based on the “misleading logic” that previous health threats such as BSE and Sars had not proven to be as bad as was feared.
He is expected to admit he was too slow to respond, and Hancock has already said a faster lockdown would have saved “many, many lives”, but Johnson is expected, at least in his written statement , argues that the government has succeeded as its central aim is to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed by making the “right decisions at the right times”.
Under cross-examination, Johnson will likely be forced to explain his attitude towards the elderly. The inquiry has already revealed that the government's former chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, made a comment at the time that Johnson “seemed obsessed with old people accepting their fate and letting the young get on with life”.
Johnson has previously denied using the phrase 'let the bodies pile high'. But his former chief of staff Dominic Cummings claimed he said it, while his former adviser Lord Udny-Lister told the inquiry Johnson said it in September 2020 in the context of his opposition to a third national lockdown. Vallance's diary also noted on October 25: “PM meeting – starts calling for everything to be torn. If you say yes, there will be more casualties, but so be it: 'they had a good innings'.”
Johnson's cross-examination will conclude Thursday afternoon. Charlotte Lynch said she would be back at 6:30 a.m. Thursday to make sure Johnson saw her late mother's photo this time.