Boris Johnson favoured ‘authoritarian approach' to Covid, inquiry told
Boris Johnson favoured an 'authoritarian approach' to Covid, the inquiry into the pandemic has been told.
The former prime minister was quoted in the diaries of Lord Vallance, the chief scientific adviser during the pandemic, as calling for 'a lot more punishment' of people who broke lockdown rules.
The inquiry was shown extracts from the diaries in which the peer said decision-makers 'always want to go for stick, not carrot'.
One entry, from Sept 25 2020, quoted Mr Johnson calling for the government to 'punish people who aren't doing the right thing'.
'PM: punish people who won't self-isolate,' the entry read. 'Punish people who aren't doing the right thing. Close some pubs and bars. We need a lot more punishment and a lot more closing down.'
The entry continued: 'I put a message in chat that support and engagement very important to get adherence up. PM ends with: 'massive fines, massive fines'.'
In a entry from Jan 7 2021, Lord Vallance wrote in the record of a meeting about testing: ' PM says: 'We haven't been ruthless enough. We need to force more isolation. I favour a more authoritarian approach.'
'Rather late in the day, the PM is understanding that incentives (or removal of disincentives) need to be in place to help people.
'Those instincts are punishment, not help. Sounds like a good testing system is gradually coming together and will be ready when lockdown released.'
The entry added that Baroness Harding of Winscombe, who ran the test and trace programme in England at the time, called for better schemes to help people isolate.
Lord Vallance described his so-called evening notes as 'spontaneous ways to sort of decompress at the end of the day'.
The inquiry heard that members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) 'suggested more carrot and incentives required to make people take a test, self-isolate, etc, but they always want to go for stick, not carrot'.
Asked by Sophie Cartwright, the inquiry counsel, to whom 'they' referred, Lord Vallance replied: 'I think in this case, it would have been the decision-makers for policy.'
The inquiry also heard from Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, who said Britain's ability to scale-up testing and tracing has been 'dismantled' and would be hard to achieve again in a future pandemic.
He wrote in his witness statement that 'the key lesson for the future is that a rapidly scalable testing and tracing infrastructure should be maintained ready for urgent expansion'.
Reading the statement aloud, Ms Cartwright said: 'You say this: 'I'm concerned at present, our current capacity has been dismantled, and we'll find it much harder to scale again in the future as a result.''
Mr Hancock said it would be 'hard to make the case' for large and permanent factory-scale testing in preparation for the next pandemic.
'That would be, in a perfect world, what you'd have, in the same way that you have a standing army,' he added. 'There is a case for it, but there's also a case against because it's expensive.'
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