Boris Johnson called Rishi Sunak’s team ‘pro-death’ during Covid, inquiry told

Boris Johnson referred to the Treasury under Rishi Sunak as the ‘pro-death squad’ during the pandemic, the British Covid inquiry has been told.

Boris Johnson during one of his media briefings during the Covid-19 pandemic. Picture: AFP

Boris Johnson referred to the Treasury under Rishi Sunak as the “pro-death squad” as he pushed for its support in easing lockdown restrictions, the British Covid inquiry has been told.

Sir Patrick Vallance, who was chief scientific adviser at the time, said in his diary that the then prime minister used the phrase during a meeting in January 2021 as he pushed for all lockdown restrictions to be eased by September.

Dermot Keating, counsel for the inquiry, suggested that Mr Sunak and the Treasury were referred to “pejoratively” as “pro-death”.

Questioning Stuart Glassborow, the former deputy principal private secretary to Mr Johnson, Mr Keating said: “Was HMT [Treasury] to your knowledge, the way it was pressing economic interests in discussions, did it create an environment where the Treasury and the chancellor were pejoratively referred to as pro-death?”

Mr Glassborow said he did not recall the phrase.

Mr Keating continued: “The PM is recorded [in Vallance’s diary] as saying he wants Tier 3 March 1, Tier 2 April 1, Tier 1 May 1 and nothing by September. He ends up by saying the team must bring in the pro-death squad from HMT.”

Again Mr Glassborow did not ­recall the comments.

Mr Sunak will face questions at the Covid inquiry next month. It has previously been told that England’s chief medical officer, Sir Chris Whitty, described the then chancellor’s flagship scheme to save restaurants from ruin as “Eat Out to Help Out the Virus”.

Dame Angela McLean, now the government’s chief scientific adviser, called Mr Sunak “Dr Death” because of the scheme.

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. Picture: Getty Images

A senior Treasury official said on Monday that she did not know whether Mr Sunak had assessed the risk of fuelling the pandemic with his Eat Out to Help Out scheme.

Former economic adviser Clare Lombardelli told the ­inquiry that the scheme had been “conceived in the context that it was safe to lift ­restrictions”. But she said she was not aware that any modelling had been done to assess its impact on the spread of the virus.

Asked by who and at what level the scheme was being driven forward, she said: “Policy decisions are ultimately always for ministers. The economic analysis that we were producing was very clear that there were severe economic risks to this period and that the economy was suffering quite greatly and ministers obviously wanted to know in what way they could support the economy through what was obviously a really challenging period for employers, businesses and the like.”

The inquiry was also shown an email chain in which Dame Angela, who was the deputy chief scientific adviser at the time, ­expressed concerns over the Treasury’s use of simple modelling.

The email read: “I have emailed Chris [Whitty] and Patrick [Vallance] saying HMT changed the model after I QA’d [quality assured] it and I don’t know how. Anything HMT says about infectious disease modelling therefore has no endorsement from me – they are on their own. Given their inability to spot egregious errors in other things they were sent I do not have confidence in their ability to hack a simple, sensible model.”

The Times