Media coverage of lockdown parties ‘travesty of the truth’, Johnson says

Media coverage and TV adaptations of lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street were “absurd” and “a travesty of the truth”, Boris Johnson has argued, saying the gatherings primarily involved staff trying to work hard in difficult circumstances.

In evidence to the Covid inquiry that seems likely to enrage relatives’ groups, the former prime minister said that while he reiterated his apology for the 126 fixed-penalty notices issued in No 10 for breaches of Covid rules, staff working there had been unfairly maligned.

“The version of events that has entered the popular consciousness about what is supposed to have happened in Downing Street is a million miles from the reality of what actually happened,” he told Hugo Keith KC, the inquiry counsel.

“I speak on behalf of hundreds and hundreds of hard-working civil servants who thought that they were following the rules. Some of the media coverage, the dramatic representations, that we’re now having of this are absolutely absurd.”

Johnson was challenged by Lady Hallett, the inquiry chair, who said that she had met numerous bereaved relatives during her role who said learning about the parties had exacerbated their grief.

Johnson replied: “I totally understand their feelings and what can I do but again apologise for mistakes that we made?”

However, he went on: “I think that the characterisation, the representation that has been of what civil servants and advisers were doing in No 10 has been a travesty of the truth. They thought they were working very, very hard, which they were.”

The guidance during Covid was “written in a way so as to allow businesses to have flexibility”, Johnson said, arguing that the breaches were largely inadvertent because staff did not properly understand rules and were working under intense pressure.

He said: “We were having to call meeting after meeting after meeting, at all hours of the day and night, in rapid succession and summon people rapidly to different meetings. In those conditions, it was very hard to follow the letter of the guidance, and I have tried to explain that many, many times.”

Keith challenged Johnson’s narrative by showing the inquiry an exchange of WhatsApp messages with Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, in December 2021, as details of the parties were first being reported in the media.

Johnson wrote in one message: “In retrospect we all should have told people – above all [Johnson’s head of communications] Lee Cain – to think about their behaviour in number ten and how it would look. But now we must smash on.”

This was, Keith told Johnson, “a reference to behaviour, and the behaviour of your officials and advisers, and you knew how it would look, but you didn’t care that much”.

Johnson angrily rejected this, saying that while he could have done more “to insist that people thought about the way their behaviour would be perceived by others”, he cared deeply about Covid.

He recounted being in intensive care in March 2020 with his own serious bout of the virus, and seeing men of a similar age also there, “and some of us were going to make it, some of us were not”.

He went on: “I knew from that experience what an appalling disease this is. I had absolutely no personal doubt about that, from March onwards. To say that I didn’t care about the suffering that was being inflicted on the country is simply not right.”

Keith replied to say that he had not suggested Johnson did not care about suffering, but that “you didn’t care about the reaction to the behaviour”.

Johnson then said: “Thank you for that clarification.”