Boris Johnson met with Russian mogul Lebedev at height of pandemic

As UK Government officials were making preparations for the pandemic in March 2020, then-prime minister Johnson made contact with Lebedev on two known occasions.

He would later be given a life peerage by Johnson and ennobled in November 2020.

It also emerged at the UK Covid inquiry that Johnson had no communication with officials regarding the pandemic over a 10-day period in February during half term. 

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On March 18 2020, just days after Johnson told the country to stop all “non-essential contact and travel”, the then Tory MP had a phone call with Lebedev.

He also, according to evidence presented to the Covid-19 Inquiry, had a private meeting with the peer the following day on March 19.

On March 23, Johnson announced the first lockdown in the UK due to the spread of Covid-10, and ordered people to “stay at home”.

An entry in Johnson’s diary for March 19 reads: “Private meeting with Evgeny Lebedev (Lebedev Holdings which own Evening Standard, The Independent and London Live).”

Martin Reynolds, Johnson’s principal private secretary during the pandemic, told the inquiry: “Ultimately it is for the Prime Minister to decide his use of time and if he decided that was important, it’s for him to decide.”

Johnson previously admitted to meeting with Russian oligarch, and father to Evgeny, Alexander Lebedev without officials present while he was foreign secretary.

During a session of the Commons Liaison Committee in July 2022, Johnson told MPs he “certainly” met the former KGB officer in Italy in 2018.

It came amid an investigation into the peerage handed to Lebedev, with newspaper reports claiming that security services withdrew an assessment that granting the peerage posed a national security risk after Johnson intervened.

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It also emerged that no notes on coronavirus were sent to Johnson between February 14 and 24 2020 – a period that coincided with half-term.

Keith KC said: “There were no communications by email, by Cobra, by boxed notes, with the prime minister during that 10-day period on coronavirus. Why do you think that might have been?”

Reynolds replied that he “cannot recall why and whether there was any urgent business to transact over that period with the prime minister”.

It was put to him that that period was half-term, and Reynolds accepted that. He was then asked why he did not question that the prime minister wasn't being kept in the loop during that period. 

“I probably should have done so," he replied. 

"Equally, I think there are many others who would normally have said ‘we need to just keep the prime minister updated, can we update them with X, Y or Z?"

Reynolds also told the probe that the former prime minister “did blow hot and cold on some issues” during the pandemic.

Before the inquiry broke for lunch, Hugo Keith KC said: “There is a great deal of material from WhatsApps, Mr [Dominic] Cummings’s statement, Patrick Vallance’s diaries, showing that following his return from his illness, the Prime Minister again oscillated in terms of what should be done, he wondered whether he should be regarded as the ‘mayor in the Jaws film’ – shutting the beaches.”

Keith then asked Martin Reynolds: “Then, within hours or days, he would take a contrary position and this was noted by Mr Cummings, Mr Case, Sir Patrick Vallance and others. Did you notice that?”

Reynolds responded: “I think it’s fair to say the Prime Minister did, as it were, blow hot and cold on some issues.”

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Keith added: “On the most vital issues which his government faced?”

Reynolds said: “Yes, but also the most difficult choices the country was facing – both of which had very difficult consequences.”

The former official also told the inquiry that plans to deal with coronavirus were “inadequate to deal with the nature of the crisis we were confronted with”.

Keith (below) asked Reynolds that after “four of five weeks of warnings” at the beginning of March there was still “no plan” for the NHS or other government departments to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I think the plan wasn’t sophisticated enough to deal with the crisis it was facing, I don’t think I can answer whether there was no plan,” Reynolds said.

Keith continued: “There was no plan for coronavirus, was there, Mr Reynolds? You know there wasn’t.

“You know as a matter of strategy there had never been any debate about coronavirus – the United Kingdom’s strategy was based expressly on a pandemic influenza. Do you agree there was no plan for coronavirus?”

Reynolds said: “I’m not sufficiently expert to say whether the plans which were pre-existing were replicable for the nature of the crisis … and to what extent.”