Boris Johnson could face legal action over pandemic failings after damning Covid inquiry report
Boris Johnson could face legal action over failures that led to more than 23,000 deaths during the pandemic; because families who lost their loved ones to Covid are demanding that he be banned from public life.
After the Covid investigation found thousands of lives could have been saved if the country had been locked down a week earlier and that the culture at the heart of Number 10 had contributed to the government’s pandemic failures, the UK Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group said the former prime minister “must be held accountable”.
Meanwhile, senior Tories refused to accept some of the report’s findings; Lord Michael Gove, a cabinet minister throughout the pandemic, warned against “oversimplifying” the results, while former health secretary Nadine Dorries described the report as “sensational”.
Mr Johnson has so far refused to comment on the report since it was published on Thursday, despite harsh criticism of his leadership during the pandemic.
Bereaved families described the former prime minister’s silence as “deafening”, adding: “We don’t want an apology, we want consequences. Boris Johnson should have no role in public life and no right to benefit from public funds.”
“His actions during the pandemic amount to one of the gravest betrayals of the British public in modern history.
“That’s why we will now pursue all legal options to hold Boris Johnson personally accountable for his actions during the pandemic. Justice for those we’ve lost means real consequences for those who failed them, and we won’t stop until that justice is delivered.”
Independent He understands that the campaign group is considering its options regarding legal action, whether that be a civil lawsuit to seek damages or potentially a private prosecution.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch also refused to apologize for the government’s handling of the pandemic, while Lord Gove apologized for the “mistakes” the government had made but also defended the “toxic” culture in Mr Johnson’s Number 10.
Ms Dorries, a close ally of the former Prime Minister who has since defected to Reform England, told Times Radio: “I don’t recognize the picture he painted of the political management of Covid at the time. I served as health secretary throughout the Covid pandemic. And what I saw was people working very hard and doing the best they could to ensure we approached the pandemic in the right way and saved as many lives as possible.”
“So I don’t accept that finding. And I find it quite sensational. I also think that that finding doesn’t take into account how we suddenly found ourselves in this position very quickly and how hard people worked to put both measures in place and how we responded to the elderly, the vulnerable, care homes, schools, children and all the different groups that need to be taken into account in this process. There doesn’t seem to be any explanation for that.”
Meanwhile, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, harshly criticized the report’s author, former Court of Appeal judge Baroness Heather Hallett, accusing her of trying to “rewrite history”.
He said: “Looking back, I think it was extremely easy to do an investigation after the fact. After all, we MPs were given a briefing a week before the lockdown and at that point people were confidently predicting that over two million people would be hospitalized and 450,000 of them would die. So, you know, people didn’t really know what was going to happen.”
“I think it’s just rewriting history, and that’s what we’re doing in hindsight, and I’m not sure there’s evidence to support some of the claims that 23,000 people died because of the delay that week. I guess that doesn’t ring true to me.”
The investigation found a full lockdown could have been avoided in 2020 if restrictions had been imposed earlier, painting a picture of chaotic decision-making at the heart of government.
Lord Gove admitted some clashes in Downing Street during the pandemic response were “far from ideal”, but denied a “toxic” culture was leading to preventable deaths and argued that “the business of government during a crisis cannot be carried on like a Jane Austen novel”.
Asked if he accepted that the toxic culture down the street had led to the deaths, the former Cabinet minister told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “No, I don’t accept that either.
“I think there are certainly moments when voices are raised, words are litigated, less-than-ideal attitudes are displayed, but the job of government during a crisis cannot be carried on like a Jane Austen novel.
“Like everyone else around the world, we were facing an unprecedented crisis due to a new virus that most intelligence agencies now believe was a laboratory leak rather than a naturally occurring virus, and of course voices are being raised under pressure that flawed information errors have been made.”
