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LONDON — Boris Johnson joked that the U.K. Treasury was a “pro-death squad” as he pushed to ease coronavirus restrictions, the country’s official COVID-19 inquiry heard.
Extracts from the contemporaneous diary of Patrick Vallance, chief scientific adviser during the pandemic, were read out by inquiry counsel Dermot Keating during the probe’s latest evidence session Monday.
They center on Johnson views about progressively relaxing COVID restrictions through the country’s “tier” system of regional curbs — and suggest Johnson wanted to enlist lockdown-skeptics from the top finance department run at the time by Rishi Sunak, who eventually succeeded Johnson as prime minister.
The inquiry heard that Johnson “wants tier 3 [by] March 1, tier 2 [by] April 1, tier 1 [by] May 1 and nothing by September.” According to Vallance’s diary, Johnson ended the meeting “by saying the team must bring in the pro-death squad from HM T[reasury.]”
Pressed on the line, Stuart Glassborow — a former top civil service aide to Johnson — said he “does not recall” that phrase being used.
The claim came on the day Clare Lombardelli, the Treasury’s chief economic adviser during the pandemic, said Sunak had been advised to “push back strongly” on proposals for a brief second national lockdown at the end of 2020. “The economic impact would be severe, making firm failures and redundancies far likelier,” she said.
Britain’s COVID inquiry has heard a series of incendiary claims in recent weeks as former aides and officials have been grilled by counsel. Sunak, Johnson and other top figures from the government are expected to give evidence — and detail their version of events — at a later date.
