Boris pledges a public inquiry on the official response
BORIS Johnson has pledged to set up a public inquiry into the Government’s handling of the pandemic once it is over.
Dropping his previous resistance, he said: “Certainly we will have an independent inquiry into what happened.”
In a heated Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday he also accused Labour of “knocking the confidence” of the public about returning to work, schools and shops. Earlier, Sir Ed Davey, the acting Lib Dem leader, urged Mr Johnson to “commit in principle to a public inquiry”. He said: “Under this PM we suffered one of the worst death rates in the world and Europe’s worst death rate for health and care workers.
“Previously he’s refused my demand for an immediate independent inquiry, saying it’s too soon, even though back in 2003 he voted for an independent inquiry into the Iraq war just months after it had started.”
Mr Johnson replied: “As I’ve told the House several times, I do not believe that now, in the middle of combating, still as we are, a pandemic, is the right moment to devote huge amounts of official time to an inquiry, but of course we will seek to learn the lessons of this pandemic in the future.”
His spokesman later said details of the probe would be announced “in due course”.
Mr Johnson also clashed with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, saying: “Once again he attacks the test-and-trace operation which is working at absolutely unprecedented scale.”
Around 144,000 people had self-isolated as a result of being contacted by the NHS program, he added. Sir Keir hit back:
“Standing up every week and saying it’s a ‘stunning success’ is kidding no one.The reality is this: trace and track is not working as promised as it stands today.”
On jobs, Mr Johnson admitted he did not have a “magic wand” to save every threatened role.
He also said of Sir Keir: “He has to work out whether he’s going to support or oppose the Government’s programme to get people back into work. One day he says it’s safe to go back to schools, the next day he’s taking the line of unions; one day they’re supporting our economic programme, the next day they’re saying our stamp duty cut is an unacceptable bung.”
Then, taunting Sir Keir about his career as a lawyer, he joked: “He needs to make up his mind which brief he’s going to take today, because at the moment he’s got more briefs than Calvin Klein.”