Michael Gove warned the Government was "f***ing up" in stark WhatsApps before the first lockdown.
As he appeared at the Covid Inquiry, the senior Tory issued an apology to families who lost loved ones for the mistakes made during the pandemic. The Cabinet minister admitted errors including imposing a lockdown too slowly in March 2020 and not bringing back strict enough measures when the second wave hit.
Mr Gove also said the Government needed to reflect on how it bought PPE for hospital staff. Critics have accused ministers of handing cash to Tory pals. The Covid Inquiry was shown WhatsApps exchanged by Mr Gove and Dominic Cummings in March 2020.
In a message on March 4, the minister wrote: "You know me. I don't often kick off. But we're f***ing up as a Government and missing golden opportunities. I will carry on doing what I can but the whole situation is even worse than you think and action needs to be taken or we'll regret it for a long time."
A week later on March 11, Mr Cummings complained that the Cabinet Office was a "f***ing joke". "They told us they had plan. Obv bollocks," he added. He said he was "tempted" to quit and take his family to the countryside, adding: "People should be shot."
Mr Gove asked: "Who did you envisage first in line?" But Mr Cummings said that was "not for phones!". Two weeks later Mr Cummings broke lockdown rules by taking his family to County Durham.
Giving evidence, Mr Gove said he was sorry for the "pain" and "loss" endured by those whose family members died because of mistakes. As a senior Government minister involved in key decisions, he said: “I must take my share of responsibility for that.”
He added: "Politicians are human beings, we're fallible, we make mistakes and we make errors... But I also want to stress that I - and those with whom I worked - were also seeking at every point, in circumstances where every decision was difficult and every course was bad, to make those decisions that we felt we could in order to try to deal with an unprecedented virus."
During the pandemic, Mr Gove chaired meetings of the Covid O (Covid Operations) committee, which made key decisions on lockdown restrictions. Asked to list the biggest mistakes made by the Government, he said: "I believe that we were too slow to lock down initially in March. I believe that we should have taken stricter measures before we eventually decided to do so late in October.
"I believe that while it was admirable that we succeeded in building testing capacity so quickly, that our the strategic approach to who should be tested and why and what our tests were for who was not as rigorously thought through as it might have been. I am also concerned that we did not pay enough attention to the impact particularly on children and vulnerable children of some of the measures that we took.
"I also believe that the approach that we took towards PPE procurement deserves at the very least reflection." Mr Gove dismissed a complaint from Cabinet Secretary Simon Case that working with Boris Johnson's team was like "taming wild animals". The minister said that “strong personalities” were needed in No10.
He also defended former Health Secretary Matt Hancock, insisting that “many of the decisions that he made were right and displayed foresight and wisdom”. Mr Gove at one point raised the possibility that Covid was “man-made”.
"There is a significant body of judgment that believes that the virus itself was man-made and that presents challenges as well," he said. But he was told this issue was not part of the Inquiry’s terms of reference.
Later Dame Professor Jenny Harries, who was deputy chief medical officer as the crisis unfolded, defended describing the UK as an "international exemplar" in preparing for a pandemic.
On April 19, 2020, she claimed the country "has been an international exemplar in preparedness. She told the inquiry: "I recognise that in retrospect this feels wrong, but these weren't my assessments, they were objective external assessments. There are areas we need to look at globally."
Dame Jenny admitted that at the time she said the words the UK wasn't in an "exemplary" position.
She was also shown an email sent on March 10, 2020, in which she said: "I think we need to strongly challenge the idea that doing something sooner is better - it is genuinely potentially quite dangerous, which is why a responsible government taking decisions based on evidence would want to make sure the timing was as good as it possibly could be for maximum effect."
Meanwhile it emerged Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford complained that Mr Johnson treated devolved administrations "like a set of unruly, unreliable adolescents".
Mr Gove was shown a statement written by Mr Drakeford which said: "It appears to me that his thinking, as the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was not that the UK Government needed to co-operate effectively with the devolved governments as equal partners who should be properly involved in decision-making, but that they were to be handled with care like a set of unruly, unreliable adolescents whose judgements were flawed."
He said a comment by Mr Johnson that it was "optically wrong" for the PM to be seen with First Ministers. Mr Gove said there were concerns about information being leaked by devolved governments, but added: "In the greater scheme of things that wasn't a particular concern."
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