Johnson begins second day of evidence to UK's Covid inquiry

Britain's former prime minister Boris Johnson has told the UK's Covid-19 inquiry that he is "not confident that there is substantial evidence" that the Eat Out to Help Out scheme during the pandemic led to a rise in cases.

He is beginning his second day of evidence at the inquiry. Mr Johnson said: "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, nor am I confident that there is very substantial evidence that it did indeed add to the to the R (reproductive number of the virus). "I defer to what your inquiry has discovered, but I can't see anything that conclusively shows that it made a big difference.

At the time it wasn't presented to me as something that would." He added: "The thinking was that the country had made a huge effort, that we got the R down below one, that the disease was no longer spreading in the way that it had been, and that within the budget of risk, it was now possible to open up hospitality. "That being so, logically, if we were going to take advantage of that - if we were going to allow the hospitality sector to take advantage of the the freedom that our collective efforts had won them - then it seemed to me to make sense to make sure that they actually had some customers, that was my thinking. "And it seemed to me that if it was safe to open hospitality, then it must be safe for people to go to hospitality.

He continued: "At the time that the Eat Out to Help Out policy was being aired with me for the first time, it was not presented to me as an as an acceleration, simply something to make sense of the freedoms that we were already we were already giving. "I must emphasise, it was not at the time presented to me