Imogen James
Live reporter

The inquiry has broken for lunch. It has been a tough morning of questioning - while I grab a sandwich, here's what you need to know:

• The first topic was Eat Out to Help Out. Johnson said it didn't "add to the budget of risk" and was surprised when Sir Chris Whitty later referred to it as "eat out to help the virus"
• On rules and fines, Johnson wrote in 2020 he wanted "tougher enforcement and bigger fines". But today he said the government could have relied more on common sense
• The inquiry heard Johnson decided against a circuit breaker lockdown in September 2020, in favour of the regional tier system. He said he thought this system was “worth trying” - but it later "ran out of road"
• Johnson was accused of wanting to “let the virus rip” - but he said, when he raised the idea, he was merely testing the argument, and challenging the consensus

• He admitted it was a “bad moment” when adviser Dominic Cummings travelled to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight
• But he defended the culture in Downing Street, saying the idea of mass rule-breaking was a "million miles" from the truth

Finally before the lunchbreak, the inquiry goes back to the "rule of six" - which allowed up to six people to meet during the pandemic for social purposes.

According to Patrick Vallance's diaries from September 2020, Johnson apparently used vulgar language about the Daily Mail's criticism of the rule.

Since leaving office, Johnson has become a columnist for the paper.

"I'm sorry to have said this about the Daily Mail," says Johnson. "I don't think this is intended to be any criticism of that great organ."

Just before the lunch break, Johnson is questioned by Pete Weatherby KC who represents Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice.

Weatherby brings up an email from 26 April 2020 between Johnson and his former adviser Dominic Cummings, where Johnson says the test and trace system is "whistling in the dark" and involves "an app that doesn't work".

Johnson says he was initially told the UK was "well-covered", had "ample preparations" and a "very good test and trace system" - but that turned out not to be true.

The lawyer argues that the reason the government did not have a secure grasp of where it was on the curve before lockdown in March was because "the UK didn't have enough tests".

Johnson concedes that the UK's diagnostic industry was "not as well developed" - but says the government then set up "one of the biggest testing industries in Europe".

Keith continues with his line of questioning about rule-breaking gatherings held in Downing Street.

Johnson says that the lawyer is focusing on WhatsApp messages and "things I'm supposed to have said which indicate I didn't care. I did care, and I continue to care passionately about it".

"I haven't talked about this before in public," Johnson says, before pausing as he becomes emotional.

"And it goes with what you were saying earlier, about elderly people and what you claim is my indifference to the pandemic.

"I just want to remind you that 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.

"Some of us were going to make it and some of us weren't.

"I knew from that experience what an appalling disease this is... I had absolutely no personal doubt about that from March onwards.

"To say that I didn't care about the suffering that was being inflicted on the country is simply not right."

On Partygate, people will judge for themselvespublished at 12:34 Greenwich Mean Time 7 December 2023

12:34 GMT 7 December 2023

Nick Eardley
Political correspondent

Image source, Handout

The rule-breaking gatherings in Downing Street helped bring down Boris Johnson's government.

As Lady Hallett - the inquiry chair - has just highlighted, "Partygate" also exacerbated the pain many bereaved families felt.

But Boris Johnson is returning to a defence of what was going on in No 10.

He is arguing that the public perception of what happened in Downing Street was a "million miles from the reality".

He says some of the "dramatic representations" were absurd.

Of course, we've seen some images of drinks gatherings during lockdown - which many people will judge for themselves.

Johnson is now being pressed by the inquiry lawyer about the social gathering events that happened in Downing Street.

The first reports of social gatherings in No 10 emerged in November 2021. Several events were later investigated in the so-called Partygate Report, which was released in May 2022.

One of the events in question was Johnson's birthday, which was celebrated in Downing Street on 19 June 2020, soon after the Barnard Castle scandal.

In April 2022, Johnson was issued with a fixed penalty notice in relation to that gathering.

Image source, EPA

The Barnard Castle scandal is brought up by Hugo Keith KC.

He is referring to the time Dominic Cummings, Johnson's former chief adviser, drove from London to Barnard Castle in County Durham in March 2020 while having Covid symptoms.

The country was in lockdown and non-essential travel was not permitted. Cummings later said he drove to Barnard Castle to test his ability to drive back to London, after experiencing loss of vision due to coronavirus.

Public confidence in the government in England - but not elsewhere in the UK - "dipped significantly" after this, Keith says.

Johnson says: "It was a bad moment, I won't pretend otherwise."

We now move to discuss the Omicron variant - which the inquiry lawyer reminds us became apparent around the beginning of December 2021.

Hugo Keith KC asks what happened in late December 2021 which meant a severe lockdown was not implemented.

Johnson says this was one of the "possibly rare" occasions when he felt he had "got a pretty good handle on the data" - "maybe I was flattering myself," he says.

The former PM was watching the data "very closely" and the infection fatality rate (IFR) in the Gauteng province of South Africa seemed to be improving, he goes on.

He adds: "The data we were seeing from South Africa seemed to me to suggest that Omicron was less deadly... we were lucky with Omicron."

Hugo Keith KC is now focussing on restrictions in English schools.

Johnson says the government was "desperate" to keep schools open in January 2021 because they had seen from before that closing schools meant the "poorest kids" had come off worse.

As a reminder, schools were kept open in the second lockdown in the autumn 2020, but closed in the first lockdown in March.

He says he fought in his "heart and head" to keep them open again during the third lockdown in January 2021, but "it just wasn't a runner and we had to lock everything down".

Johnson is asked just "how hard you fought in your heart and head" and quotes the witness statement of then Education Secretary Gavin Williamson - who wanted to keep them open, or close them for a month at most.

Schools were eventually closed in England in early January, although many had never reopened after the Christmas break. A phased reopening began on 8 March.

Jim Reed
Health reporter

Image source, HM Government

The last hour of this morning session has all been about the decision to lock down England for a second time in the autumn of 2020.

We know Johnson decided not to follow the advice to bring in a circuit-breaker in September, although a package of lighter restrictions was quickly introduced - stronger guidance to work from home and a 10pm curfew in pubs, for example.

Then, on 12 October, the tier system was announced.

Johnson said he was "full of hope" the idea would work, but "by the end of the month it was was clear we were running out of road".

Cases kept rising nationally and and a full lockdown across England was announced on 31 October.

Other witnesses have suggested that those regional rules could have worked they had been announced earlier with tougher rules for the top tier.

Johnson was unsure on that - but he did say that one of the lessons from the pandemic is that imposing "artificial boundaries", with different restrictions across neighbouring towns and cities, too often created "huge problems".

The inquiry is still considering the measures that were put in place in September and October in the lead up to the second lockdown, which came into force on 5 November.

Hugo Keith KC asks whether Johnson accepts that he imposed a "rollercoaster lockdown process overall" because he waited to impose harder restrictions.

Johnson refutes the idea he "delayed and then did something last minute".

He also says the government had not "budgeted" for the Alpha (or Kent) variant, which was identified in early December and which was "much more transmissible than the original coronavirus".

He says that the "rollercoaster" was "very largely driven by nature" and we need to consider "the extent to which we were able to control rollercoaster".

The inquiry continues to focus on the tier system.

Johnson says that what the government wanted out of the tiering system was to "crush the virus where it was most prevalent".

However, he says they did not achieve this because they were not able to get measures put in fast enough and it was "difficult to implement" across local areas.

He says the logisitics were "laborious" and regional leaders "rightly" wanted extra financial help.

"We wanted to try the tiered approach, we wanted to try the local approach, [but] that was gradually running out of road and we had to go for national measures," he says.

Nick Eardley
Political correspondent

Image source, PA Media

Regional restrictions - the tiered system - was controversial and often led to rows between central government and local leaders.

You might remember the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, very publicly expressing his concerns about his area being put in Tier 3.

It's interesting that Boris Johnson is arguing that if he had had the power to introduce local measures "harder and faster", it might have worked.

Of course, Johnson is trying to defend the actions of his government.

He could have adopted national restrictions - and a second lockdown - earlier than he did.

Did Eat Out to Help Out spark the second wave? It's not clearpublished at 11:26 Greenwich Mean Time 7 December 2023

11:26 GMT 7 December 2023

Nick Triggle
Health Correspondent

The inquiry is now taking a short coffee break, so let's look back at one of the topics that was discussed this morning: the Eat Out to Help Out scheme.

The extent to which it caused an uptick in infections in the autumn is unclear.

Work by the University of Warwick suggested it was responsible for between 8% and 17% new cases in the areas where it ran.

But other work by experts at the Resolution Foundation and the University of Oxford has cast doubt on drawing a strong a link. The South West, for example, had the highest uptake of the scheme, but one of the lowest increases following the introduction of it.

What is more, other countries in Europe saw a surge as the months turned colder – and, of course, the scheme did not run there.

Instead, perhaps what is more telling is what it tells us about the government strategy – or, as Sir Patrick and others made clear, the lack of one.

Having just come out of lockdown, it arguably sent the message that it was time to get back to normal when the pandemic still had a long way to run.

Jim Reed
Reporting from the inquiry

Johnson is now being shown a series of extracts from Sir Patrick Vallance's diaries.

Vallance quotes Johnson as advocating a "let the virus rip" approach and being prepared to let the elderly "accept their fate".

Johnson says the implication that he wanted to delay a national lockdown to the last possible moment was "rubbish" and "completely wrong".

In an angry exchange, he accuses the barrister questioning him, Hugo Keith KC, of "culling accounts" from people's "jottings in meetings".

"I had to challenge the consensus in these meetings," he says.

"When the disease picked up again, we went into lockdown on the 31st of October," he says.

Johnson says this line of questioning "does not do justice to what we did".

Image source, UK Covid-19 Inquiry

The inquiry is now discussing the events of September 2020.

On Sunday 20 September, a group of scientists with very different views on lockdown were invited to brief the prime minister on Zoom from his Downing Street office.

That included two key members of his Sage advisory group, Prof John Edmunds and Prof Angela McLean, who both supported tougher action.

Two academics from Oxford University, Prof Carl Heneghan and Prof Sunetra Gupta - who were far more sceptical on lockdown - were also present.

In emails, Sir Patrick Vallance described those two academics as the "let it rip brigade".

Asked about this meeting, Boris Johnson said he listened with "great care" to the debate.

He said that the scientists he thought may support a "let it rip" approach actually supported more restrictive "precautionary" policies.

He said there was a "surprising degree of unanimity" in the views of both sides in the meeting.

Keith is now asking Johnson why a "two-week circuit-breaker" was not introduced nationally in September in favour of the tier system that was implemented in October 2020.

The inquiry sees messages from Dominic Cummings, suggesting closing hospitality, gyms, and other sectors - but not schools.

Johnson says he thought the tier system - which was made up of three (later four) levels of restrictions that applied to different areas based on their Covid rate - was "worth trying".

The disease was "diversely spread" over the country, he says, so he thought regional restrictions were "sensible" and would "respect the geography of the outbreak".

"[We are] not going to close hospitality in Devon or Cornwall because of whatever is happening in the West Midlands or elsewhere," he says.

Johnson also says that "the difficulty with a circuit breaker is you don't know whether it will work. If it's short, you may run the even worse risk of having to do it again."

Image source, Reuters

The inquiry's counsel moves on to the idea of "segmentation" - i.e. the separation of older and vulnerable people from society - which was an idea floated around government in July and August 2020.

Johnson is asked why the proposal was not taken further.

He says that despite that sounding reasonable, many elderly would still end up getting the disease because of how transmissible the virus was - which would "break the segmentation you're trying to impose".

Keith brings up a set of messages sent to a WhatsApp group in August, in which Johnson and Chris Whitty discussed the idea.

Johnson wrote: "Why not give the over-65s a choice?"

Whitty said the proposal was reasonable at an "individual level", but that at a "population level the problem is that once R goes above 1 the deaths will start rising exponentially".

Johnson tells the inquiry that Whitty's point is essential: "Even if you've elected to be shielded... it's not going to work because the infectiousness is too great."

Jim Reed
Reporting from the inquiry

The inquiry was just shown a note written by Boris Johnson to his advisers in August 2020.

In capital letters, he wrote that the overriding message should be "TOUGHER ENFORCEMENT AND BIGGER FINES."

At the end of August 2020, the government introduced a new £10,000 top fine for repeatedly breaching lockdown rules.

When she gave evidence last month, then Home Secretary Priti Patel said the laws at the time were confusing and that £10,000 fines were "disproportionate".

Johnson just suggested that, with hindsight, more could have been done to rely on common sense rather than strict enforcement.

"If we needed to avoid tougher measures, we needed people to obey the existing structures," he said.

Johnson is now asked about fines and the tactics he used to encourage compliance with regulations.

Earlier in the inquiry, former Home Secretary Priti Patel suggested Covid regulations had proved confusing for both the public and police.

Johnson says that in the future there needs to be a focus on "simplifying" the approach and "relying more on common sense and less on regulation and legislation".

Addressing libertarians in particular, he says there may be limits to this because "people want to see everybody obliged to obey the same set of rules".

"They want their neighbours to do what they're doing," he says.