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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

That Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock should be prosecuted for the avoidable Covid deaths

526 replies

LlynTegid · 20/11/2025 17:31

The part 2 report of the Covid inquiry finds that at least 20,000 deaths were avoidable, had restrictions come in a week earlier.

Various other findings confirming the failures of Mr Johnson and Mr Hancock.

I think they should face criminal charges, such as corporate manslaughter given government is an employer. AIBU

OP posts:
Thread gallery
6
charliehungerford · 21/11/2025 12:28

RubySquid · 20/11/2025 18:19

Michael Gove?? If I remember correctly wasn't he having affair with one of his staff and definitely not social distancing

The thing that should have happened early on is to stop the bloody flights coming in . Especially from China

Edited

That was Matt Hancock, not Michael Gove.

Efacsen · 21/11/2025 12:33

Even Cummings described Johnson as chaotic and indecisive - likened him to a shopping trolley

No-one would describe May like that

So whilst the expert scientific evidence would have been the same differing personalities would impact focus and decision-making around the evidence

DonicaLewinsky · 21/11/2025 12:37

EasternStandard · 21/11/2025 11:21

I think we need a pretty good gap. If another virus necessitated the same I doubt the ability to support financially would be there, at all really.

Yeah, I really doubt any lockdown would be possible for a while. A pp mentioned the sweet spot, which is a useful term here. We would need a virus that was serious enough to make people ok with limiting their behaviour, but not so serious that they'd stop turning up to work in food chain supplies, utilities and so on. And we'd also need to pay for it. I'm not saying lockdown could never happen again, but as you say, there would need to be a decent gap before we can pull that off again.

DuncinToffee · 21/11/2025 12:37

charliehungerford · 21/11/2025 12:28

That was Matt Hancock, not Michael Gove.

Gove was too busy lobbying for Covid VIP lanes

Dery · 21/11/2025 12:37

“Createausername1970 · Yesterday 17:37

lazyarse123 · Yesterday 17:34
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Do i think they got it wrong? Yes I do. Do i have any idea what they should have done? No i don't.
Edited
Agreed.
Had they tried to bring anything in sooner, like social distancing etc., I am not sure it would have been adhered to anyway.
Whatever they did would have been wrong from some perspective. Rock and a hard place.”

This with bells on. I’m not a Johnson fan but i think this was an extremely difficult situation where whatever was done would be wrong for someone. Plus he and Sunak brought in the furlough scheme.

DuncinToffee · 21/11/2025 12:38

Dery · 21/11/2025 12:37

“Createausername1970 · Yesterday 17:37

lazyarse123 · Yesterday 17:34
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Do i think they got it wrong? Yes I do. Do i have any idea what they should have done? No i don't.
Edited
Agreed.
Had they tried to bring anything in sooner, like social distancing etc., I am not sure it would have been adhered to anyway.
Whatever they did would have been wrong from some perspective. Rock and a hard place.”

This with bells on. I’m not a Johnson fan but i think this was an extremely difficult situation where whatever was done would be wrong for someone. Plus he and Sunak brought in the furlough scheme.

Edited

Do you include the partying in that?

Dery · 21/11/2025 12:43

@DuncinToffee - i agree they got stuff wrong but Johnson (rightly) was brought down by the partying in the end.

EasternStandard · 21/11/2025 12:43

DonicaLewinsky · 21/11/2025 12:37

Yeah, I really doubt any lockdown would be possible for a while. A pp mentioned the sweet spot, which is a useful term here. We would need a virus that was serious enough to make people ok with limiting their behaviour, but not so serious that they'd stop turning up to work in food chain supplies, utilities and so on. And we'd also need to pay for it. I'm not saying lockdown could never happen again, but as you say, there would need to be a decent gap before we can pull that off again.

I think we’d fold fiscally. We’re maxed on borrowing already. Entering a pandemic without the ability to do a lot of what happened last time - ie paying furlough, close sectors would make the last one look like a cake walk.

Depending on the virus and symptoms etc, people would react anyway if they were bad there’d just be a dire financial constraint.

DuncinToffee · 21/11/2025 12:51

Dery · 21/11/2025 12:43

@DuncinToffee - i agree they got stuff wrong but Johnson (rightly) was brought down by the partying in the end.

Actually it was the appointment of Chris Pincher that brought him down but lying about partygate was part of his downfall.

In hindsight he was wholly unsuitable for the role as PM

Even though the warning signs were there long before Coid

SJone0101 · 21/11/2025 12:58

Absolutely not!

We should never have closed down. If you were over 60, had health issues, then you should isolate. Everyone else should have just cracked on.

BlueandWhitePorcelain · 21/11/2025 13:01

Janiie · 21/11/2025 10:48

'How could they enforce infection control, when they’d go into one room to look after a patient with Covid, and then go look after every one else with no effective PPE? Asymptomatic transmission wasn’t even recognised early on'

Same as if someone was discharged during an outbreak of anything. Hand washing, limit staff not use aganecy staff trooping about from care home to care home,

Care home owners hide behind the 'we were forced to take them' and 'we didn't know' excuses when in fact they weren't forced they obviously wanted the fees. Implementing the most basic of infection control procedures would've limited the spread. I know someone discharged from hospital one morning and sat in the day room that very afternoon. Seriously.

Care home owners need to be held accountable too.

Have you not read my post? A nurse, familiar with infection control, could not stop Covid spreading through her nursing home, partly because she couldn’t get proper PPE or testing. It’s no good you stating care home owners were at fault, because they only had to do proper infection control, when the evidence is there to say, it didn’t.

DD lived in a care home, with onsite doctors and nurses, who implemented all the infection controls and isolation. It is a charity, so nobody makes any money from running it - they only charge local authorities or the NHS the cost of the placement.

DD1 was at home for her birthday, when lockdown was announced in March 2020. She wasn’t allowed back for 6 months, because of limited testing capacity.

Anyone going to live in a house had to isolate 14 days in a different flat, before admission. On her return after 6 months, DD had to isolate for 14 days in a flat, with her own staff. 1:1 staffing is the default care there, and they weren’t using agency staff - they have their own bank staff. A resident testing with Covid was isolated in their bedroom for 10 days, and all staff going in to care for them had to wear a surgical mask, apron and gloves. The staff had to wear work uniforms and surgical masks anyway. Visitors were not allowed in the house. They could only see a resident for half an hour, after testing negative, behind a Perspex screen and wearing the PPE as above in the visitors centre.

They didn’t take patients from hospitals, unless it was one of their own residents, because it’s a specialist condition specific centre - and even then, any resident who went to hospital for even an outpatient appointment had to self isolate in a different flat on their return for 14 days, before going back to the house, where they lived normally.

DD1 still caught COVID, as did other residents on her house, I believe because staff wore surgical masks and the holes are so big, they let the virus through.

I heard the nursing home owner talk about the pressure she was put under to take patients from hospitals. She provided emails from officialdom, and her responses to them in her evidence. She said, she was the owner and she could make her own decisions (and as a nurse, she had greater knowledge than most); but she could see how managers could have given in to the pressure.

Minty25 · 21/11/2025 13:10

x2boys · 21/11/2025 07:06

Whilst I dont think the Tories will be in power any time soon ,do you really believe the pandemic would have been handled any better under Labour?

I think Wes Streeting would possibly have been more competent than Matt Hancock.

CaptainMyCaptain · 21/11/2025 13:37

ilovesooty · 21/11/2025 11:27

I agree. I'm pretty sure that Theresa May would have handled it more seriously, honestly and diligently. I bet she'd have attended COBRA meetings for a start

And she wouldn't have been having parties in No 10. Not that I'm a fan of hers and would never have voted for her but I believe she had some integrity.

CaptainMyCaptain · 21/11/2025 13:40

SJone0101 · 21/11/2025 12:58

Absolutely not!

We should never have closed down. If you were over 60, had health issues, then you should isolate. Everyone else should have just cracked on.

No other country in the world did that and not all the clinically vulnerable people were over 60.

Janiie · 21/11/2025 13:48

'Even Cummings described Johnson as chaotic and indecisive - likened him to a shopping trolley'
As if Cumming's opinion counts for anything, he seems a bit of a chaotic 'shopping trolley' himself lurching from one back stabbing plot to another.

U53rName · 21/11/2025 13:56

We can’t have it both ways—half the country saying we should have locked down earlier, and half the country saying we never should have locked down/schools should have remained open/we shouldn’t have furloughed.

ruffler45 · 21/11/2025 14:24

BIossomtoes · 21/11/2025 08:07

What they did to care homes was even more unforgivable - 25,000 untested patients discharged from hospitals into them.

Out of interest what other options were there when there were ambulances waiting outside A&Es?

We were effectively on a war footing against an enemy we could not see and had no knowledge of.

People had to make difficult decisions with little time to make them in a constantly changing situation.

FunnyOrca · 21/11/2025 14:27

TLDR

The only thing unreasonable would not to also include Rishi Sunak. Eat out to help out was killing 2,000 a day!

SeaShellsSanctuary1 · 21/11/2025 14:31

Maybe they could queue up behind Tony Blair

He actually sanctioned murder yet he has not been anywhere near a courtroom yet

BIossomtoes · 21/11/2025 14:54

SeaShellsSanctuary1 · 21/11/2025 14:31

Maybe they could queue up behind Tony Blair

He actually sanctioned murder yet he has not been anywhere near a courtroom yet

So did all the MPs of all parties who voted for the UK’s support of the US in the Iraq war in parliament.

PandoraSocks · 21/11/2025 15:00

Janiie · 21/11/2025 13:48

'Even Cummings described Johnson as chaotic and indecisive - likened him to a shopping trolley'
As if Cumming's opinion counts for anything, he seems a bit of a chaotic 'shopping trolley' himself lurching from one back stabbing plot to another.

A stopped clock etc.

Sparron · 21/11/2025 15:03

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

PandoraSocks · 21/11/2025 15:04

SeaShellsSanctuary1 · 21/11/2025 14:31

Maybe they could queue up behind Tony Blair

He actually sanctioned murder yet he has not been anywhere near a courtroom yet

Well perhaps start a thread on whether Blair should be prosecuted for war crimes?

PandoraSocks · 21/11/2025 15:09

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

I doubt very much one single person on this thread wishes that. You make a couple of reasonable points in your post, but the hyperbole completely drowns them.

Edited to remove quote from deleted post.

CagneyNYPD1 · 21/11/2025 15:10

PandoraSocks · 20/11/2025 17:46

We all saw what was happening in Italy. That should have been a bit of a clue that maybe some strong action was needed. It is not as though it all came out of the blue. We had an advantage, in fact. But Johnson was too busy fucking around.

I think this is spot on. I remember very clearly that clients of mine went skiing in northern Italy with their 4 dc during the February half term. I couldn’t believe that it was allowed considering what we knew was happening in the Italian hospitals.

But it was allowed, and they went back to school. And Dad had “flu” and the kids had “colds” a few days after they returned. Completely allowed. At the time, I knew it was bonkers that travel
over that half term break had been allowed.

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