Boris defends carving up Britain in tiered lockdowns and insists Eat Out to Help Out scheme ‘was not a gamble’
A DEFIANT Boris Johnson today defended carving up Britain into tiered lockdowns and insisted the Eat Out to Help Out scheme “was not a gamble”.
On his second day at the Covid Inquiry in West London, Mr Johnson admitted the tier system “did not work”.
But he wanted to “keep going with a regional approach” instead of a national “circuit breaker” lockdown.
The ex-PM said one circuit breaker may not have been enough and Britain could’ve found itself in an endless “yo-yo” lockdown loop.
Boris told the Inquiry: “What’s happening is that the disease is very diversely spread over over the country.
“And there are parts of the UK where it’s barely present.
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“So the question would have been, do we continue with national measures the whole time… that would just write off 2020.
“Or do you try what we tried, which is to respect and reflect the geography of the outbreak.”
Boris insisted tiers were working before the alpha variant upended the entire system.
The ex-PM also launched a staunch defence of the Eat Out to Help Out scheme.
He said it wasn’t “gamble” at the time and he was “perplexed” at the idea Britain’s chief scientist Sir Patrick Vallance and Sir Chris Whitty weren’t aware of the scheme.
He added that to this day he doesn’t believe it triggered a spike in infections.
“I don’t think that I thought that scheme in itself was a particular gamble at the time and it certainly wasn’t presented to me as such,” Boris said.
“I must emphasise, it was not at the time presented to me as something that would add to the budget of risk.”
“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.”
The ex-PM hit back at suggestions he wanted to “let it (Covid) rip” through the population.
A diary extract from Sir Patrick in May 2021, Sir Patrick read: “PM meeting – Cx (then-chancellor Rishi Sunak) suddenly pipes up on incentives already in place. Argues that we should let it rip a bit.”
But Boris told the Inquiry: “No, the implication that you’re you’re trying to draw from those conversations is completely wrong.
“My position was that we had to save human life at all ages.”