Covid inquiry portrayed my brother as the Grim Reaper himself - what rubbish, writes Rachel Johnson

I want to say a few words about Baroness Hallett's Covid Report. It only took 800 pages. It only took a mere £200m of our money, that is £160,000 a day and a modelling graph to conclude that Boris Johnson's decision to lock down a week late caused 23,000 deaths.

A figure, I should remind you, based on data, supplied by the discredited former government scientist, Professor Neil Ferguson.

And this conclusion is being received as though my brother was the Grim Reaper himself and personally visited each bedside to deliver the mortal blow.

This is expensive, vindictive rubbish, crafted with the 20/20 vision of perfect hindsight.

And I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I thought lockdowns were unnecessary. We should have protected the vulnerable and the elderly. We should never have shuttered the economy and closed schools and playgrounds.

In my view, it was a contender for the worst policy decision of the Post-War period.

Furlough hobbled the country for a generation. People still expect to be paid not to work.

It wasn't, as Baroness Hallett has said, too little, too late. In my view, it was too much, too soon.

But this inquiry was always going to be about justifying the "statist establishment" who wants the government to do everything and pay for everything for everyone.

And it was all about justifying those who howled. We needed to lock down faster, harder and deeper and stronger, and to punish those who didn't think like that or who tried to get the country through it.

And years after the politicians in charge are no longer in power, they are, of course, still in the dock.

Anyone with half a brain can see what's going on here. It's far easier to throw Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Matt Hancock under a bus, than question the state's pandemic preparedness for the next one. And there will be a next one.

Far easier and frankly, far more popular. So to those people, Hallett's report is manna from Heaven, because instead of questioning lockdown in the first place, she's apportioning blame and, in my view, royally wasted taxpayers' money, just as we did during the pandemic.

The COVID inquiry is too quick to point the finger. Actually, it took a long time, but it didn't ask the right question that might equip politicians and scientists to confront the next pandemic.

And the only question worth asking is how will this inquiry help us in the future? And yet it wasn't.

Blame Boris if you wish. I'm not going to waste my breath telling you not to. It was bad luck maybe all round that he was Prime Minister, as even I could admit that the pandemic did not play to his strengths.

But I do feel a bat squeak of anger on his behalf that he is getting all the blame and absolutely none of the credit.

Nobody would have chosen this politician out of a line-up to run the country during the pandemic. But that was how the cards fell.

What I can tell you is that he did his best. On the last time my brother saw our mother alive, a woman interrupted his last time with her to berate him. She accused him of killing, I think it was what, 300,000 people. He listened politely to her and he apologised.

What hurts me on his behalf is that he's the first person to admit that he didn't get it all right.

And he has apologised to those he let down at the Covid inquiry and elsewhere. He has apologised to all the families and I know he meant it.

Those who said he didn't take Covid seriously can most respectfully sod off. Covid certainly took him seriously. He almost died from it.

And this is why I add my voice now to those who've come out to defend the government (of the time), Michael Gove and Nadine Dorries, and to defend him against this hideous accusation that he personally caused the deaths of so many without once acknowledging how many lives were saved.

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