Boris Johnson finally says an independent inquiry WILL be held into the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis – but not yet
- Boris Johnson has confirmed that there will be an inquiry into coronavirus crisis
- PM said it was not yet time to consider the government’s response to the chaos
- Mr Johnson said an independent probe will ‘certainly’ happen when time is right
Boris Johnson has finally stated that an inquiry into the government’s handling of coronavirus will be held – but not yet.
After weeks of dodging an explicit commitment, the PM told the House of Commons that an independent probe will ‘certainly’ take place.
The comments came as Mr Johnson was challenged on the issue during the weekly PMQs session.
Liberal Democrat acting co-leader Sir Ed Davey said the UK had ‘suffered one of the worst death rates in the world’.
‘If he still rejects an immediate inquiry, will he instead commit in principle to a future public inquiry, yes or no?’ Sir Ed said.
After weeks of dodging an explicit commitment, Boris Johnson told the House of Commons that an independent probe will ‘certainly’ take place
Mr Johnson replied: ‘As I’ve told the House several times, I do not believe that now in the middle of combating, still as we are, a pandemic is the right moment to devote huge amounts of official time to an inquiry, but of course we will seek to learn the lessons of this pandemic in the future and certainly we will have an independent inquiry into what happened.’
The government has been accused of being too slow off the mark in recognising the potential threat from coronavirus.
Some experts believe that locking the country down earlier could have saved thousands of lives.
Quarantine rules were not imposed on most arrivals from outside the UK until months after the peak of the outbreak.
There has also been widespread criticism of the failure to ramp testing quickly enough, delays in getting a full contact tracing up and running, and being off the pace in introducing face masks.
The comments came as Mr Johnson was challenged on the issue during the weekly PMQs session this afternoon