Pro-death squad
JOHNSON’S DAMNING VERDICT ON RISHI’S TREASURY DURING COVID...
BORIS Johnson called the Treasury under Rishi Sunak a “death squad” a few months after the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, the Covid Inquiry heard yesterday.
The then Prime Minister used the phrase in a meeting in early 2021 as he planned to wind down lockdown rules, according to the diary of the then
Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance. Counsel to the Inquiry Dermot Keating told the hearing: “He ends up by saying the team must bring in the pro-death squad from HMT [Her Majesty’s Treasury]”.
It followed Mr Sunak’s controversial Eat Out to Help Out subsidised dining scheme in the August of 2020.
Stuart Glassborow, then deputy principal private secretary to Mr Johnson, said Downing Street staffers knew there was no scientific research carried out on the impact the policy would have. The scheme boosted the economy at the risk of spreading Covid with Chief Medical Officer Sir Chris Whitty describing it as “Eat Out to Help Out The Virus”.
Reading from a scathing 108-page report by the Institute for Government, Mr Keating went on: “Interviewees involved in discussions over social restrictions variously described central decisionmaking for much of 2020 as ‘a bit of a Punch and Judy’.
“An enormously chaotic tug of war and simply not a proper bringing together of science, public health and economic considerations.” The Inquiry was also shown a chilling note from a member of the SAGE advisory group to Mr Johnson.
In a February 2020 meeting, Dr Ben Warner wrote: “NHS f***ed in any scenario.”
He also said the
UK should have drawn up lockdown plans as soon as Italy and China did the same.
Dr Warner added: “The capacity of the NHS was not going to be close to sufficient.”
It comes after Mr Johnson likened his punishment for lockdown-busting parties in
No10 to the Salem witch trials of the 17th century.
In former MP Nadine Dorries’s new book, the ex-PM whines: “It was utterly mad. It was kind of like Salem.” Conspiracy theorist David Icke has said the book’s allegations of sinister No10 plots were “what I’ve been writing for 30 years”. Mr Johnson stood down as an MP after a probe found he lied about rule-breaking.
Decision making was ‘ a bit of a Punch and Judy’
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