Boris Johnson laid blame on the Department for Education (DfE) over its lack of preparation for school closures at the outbreak of the pandemic, telling the Covid-19 inquiry that he assumed detailed planning was going on behind the scenes.
“We were focused on trying to delay the peak of the pandemic and we thought that the closure of schools, if it had to be used at all, would be a measure of last resort,” the former prime minister said. He added: “It was my impression that the work was being done. I certainly, let me put it this way, I certainly assumed that the work was being done.”
Johnson said there were “abundant discussions” within government over planning for school closures in England, including from the DfE, whose permanent secretary at the time, Jonathan Slater, earlier told the inquiry that the department’s first request for a detailed plan did not arrive until 17 March.
Asked why the DfE’s main planning document emerged “so late in the day”, Johnson said: “I think my impression was that they’d done a lot of work … You say so late in the day, but so late in the day is, of course, a phrase or a judgment that is only open to people who are operating with hindsight.
“We didn’t know how Covid was being transmitted. We didn’t know to what extent children and young people were affected by it. We didn’t know the state of the pandemic in the country. It was very difficult to plan for how schools exactly should respond and it remained very difficult throughout the pandemic.”
In testimony as part of the inquiry’s investigation into the impact on children and young people, Johnson made it clear he initially believed school closures as being necessary only at the peak of the pandemic, until scientific advice changed to say that closures would help stop Covid’s rapid spread.
“It felt to me as though children, who are not vulnerable to Covid, were paying a huge, huge price to protect the rest of society. It was an awful thing. I wish we had found another solution,” Johnson said.
He later added: “I think that looking back on it all, the whole lockdowns, the intricacy of the rules, the rule of six, the complexity, particularly for children, I think we probably did go too far and it was far too elaborate.”
In his testimony last week, the former education secretary Gavin Williamson told the inquiry that Johnson’s government had made “many mistakes” regarding school closures. He also said that Johnson often “chose the NHS over children”.
Gavin Williamson appeared before the inquiry last week. Photograph: UK Covid-19 Inquiry/PA
But offered an opportunity to criticise Williamson for his performance, Johnson said: “I think that on the whole, given the difficulties that we faced, I think that the department under Gavin did a pretty heroic job in trying to cope with Covid, and that was my judgment.”
Asked to explain the chaos surrounding efforts to award GCSE and A-level exam results in 2020 using an algorithm, which was abruptly scrapped after it became clear that grades were being awarded unfairly, Johnson said: “I’m afraid that it was an accident of the great difficulties we faced in improvising in exceptionally difficult circumstances.”
