Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has continued to defend his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic during his second day of testimony for Britain's COVID-19 inquiry.
He expressed surprise that scientists were not consulted about the "eat out to help out" scheme, denied having said older people should "accept their fate", and claimed that the media's characterisation of the Partygate scandal was "absurd".
Messages shown to the inquiry revealed that Johnson was worried about the public's perception of parties in Downing Street after the first stories broke about the scandal.
In a message, Johnson said: "In retrospect, we all should have told people - above all Lee Cain [director of communications] - to think about their behaviour in No 10 and how it would look. But now we must smash on."
Hugo Keith KC, counsel to the inquiry, suggested that the message showed Johnson was not concerned about the rules, only the perception they had been broken, but Johnson denied this, saying "to say that I didn't care about what was happening generally is the complete opposite of the truth".
He also called the public characterisation of the parties "a million miles away from reality".
The inquiry chair, Heather Hallett, revealed she had "received a number of messages from bereaved people. So many of them suffered horrific grief during lockdown and I'm afraid Partygate has exacerbated their grief".
The parties led to 126 fixed-penalty notices being issued in Whitehall and Downing Street for breaches of COVID-19 rules, and Johnson said his staff had been unfairly maligned.
Johnson denied accusations that he did not care about COVID-19 or the suffering it wrought upon the UK by citing his own hospitalisation in April 2020, where he was attended to by Kiwi nurse Jenny McGee, who later quit the NHS citing a lack of respect.
Johnson said: "I just want to remind you when I went into intensive care. I saw around me a lot of people who were not actually elderly.
"They were middle-aged men, and they were quite like me, and some of us were going to make it and some of us weren't."
He also praised the NHS for their work during the pandemic.
He also defended not introducing a 'circuit breaker' lockdown in September 2020, despite official advice from his chief adviser Dominic Cummings and the government's chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance.
Johnson told the inquiry he ignored the advice because 'circuit breaker' is a glib phrase.
"It actually means an immensely difficult, costly exercise which falls hardest on the poorest and neediest in society which you then might have to do it again and again.
"And even then, there's no guarantee that it's going to work."
He added that the then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock was also against the circuit breaker.
Hancock quit the role after his affair, which broke COVID-19 rules, was caught on camera.
Keith asked Johnson why he didn't apply a precautionary approach.
"We ratcheted up to the measures throughout September and October, we intensified the pressure on the virus. The thing that really threw us off was the Kent variant, the Alpha variant."
The former PM also denied believing that older people needed to "accept their fate".
The inquiry had previously heard that Vallance expressed alarm Johnson was "obsessed with older people accepting their fate and letting the young get on with life and the economy going".
Johnson denied this characterisation and said "it does not do justice to my thoughts. We weren't remotely reconciled to fatalities across the country... I had to speak for everybody who wasn't in the meeting and who wanted these points put to the scientists".
Johnson had also blamed the high COVID-19 rates in Wales on "singing and obesity" according to a note in Vallance's diary, but Johnson was not asked about these comments in the inquiry.
The "eat out to help out" scheme, designed to boost business, later came to be described as "eat out and get the virus" by Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England.
It was not cleared by government scientists, which Johnson said surprised him.
He claimed to be unaware that Vallance and Whitty were against the scheme.
"I'm fairly confident that it was discussed several times in meetings in which I believe they must have been present. I don't quite understand how that could have happened.
"I remember being surprised, later - I think it was in September - when Chris says, 'This is eat out to help the virus.' And I thought, 'Well, that's funny,' because I didn't remember any previous controversy about it," he said.
Although the inquiry won't find anyone guilty of a crime, the revelations will surely harm Johnson's already tattered legacy, though he still has a £500,000 advance for his memoirs, plus a column for a newspaper.
The current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, will face the COVID-19 inquiry on Monday for a day-long hearing on his role as chancellor during the pandemic.
The inquiry has already heard claims that Sunak, then running the finance ministry, fought hard to lift restrictions at crucial stages.
