Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has denied he wanted to “let Covid rip” during the pandemic in evidence given to the public inquiry yesterday.

The former PM was responding to extracts quoted from former chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance’s diary in which he is recorded as agreeing with a motion to let the pandemic “rip”, saying: “Most people who die have reached their time anyway.”

Johnson said the implication that he agreed with the argument that was being put by some of his advisers as “completely wrong”, adding “my position was that we had to save human life at all ages, and that was the objective of the strategy and, by the way, that is what we did”.

The former PM said he regretted any “hurt and offence” caused by his language which was not intended for publication, adding a lot of what had been reported was “incorrect” and “there are words that are ascribed to me that I simply don’t recognise”.

Reacting to Johnson’s comments on Twitter, Covid 19 Bereaved Families for Justice said he was the “worst possible PM at the worst possible time”.

The group said Johnson had been “evasive and non committal” and “wouldn’t even accept his mistakes had led to excess deaths”.

According to Statista, the UK had over 220,000 Covid deaths as of May 2023 – the highest number in Europe.

“This was not the conduct of a man who wanted lessons to be learnt, and his apology rang utterly hollow,” the group said. “It’s a painful reminder of his refusal to take Covid seriously in early 2020 and start preparing testing and other public health measures.

“His indecisiveness when he refused to lockdown, causing the NHS to become overwhelmed. And his failure to learn from his mistakes in the second wave, leading to an even larger death toll than in the first.”

Helen Wildbore, director of Care Rights UK, said: “Watching Boris Johnson trying to defend his government’s mismanagement of the pandemic will have added to the distress, anger and pain of people living in care and their families, who have already suffered so much.

“Brushing off despicable comments about older people as ‘speaking bluntly’ and ‘unpolished’. Justifying Downing Street parties as staff were working ‘extremely hard’, whilst people were dying alone in care settings. The sessions exposed the former prime minister’s lack of understanding of the devastating harm and irreparable damage caused to people in care and their families.”