Boris Johnson Covid Inquiry live: ex-Prime Minister gives evidence on coronavirus pandemic - latest updates

Johnson said: "Sometimes we didn't think hard enough about the impact of lockdown on different groups. Frankly it was much easier for people with professional jobs to sit out the lockdown than it was for others, whether in the hospitality section or whatever.

"A lot of people who were on lower incomes really had a pretty tough time of it. I think it was vital to focus on those people and do everything we could to help them through lockdown, but realise it was hitting those groups particularly hard.

"For me that was a reason to be so careful about going back into a national lockdown in September [2020]."

"A great deal of evidence has been given to the effect of systemic problems in Number 10," Keith KC said. "People in the wrong jobs, talking over each other, toxicity, misogyny... either you were aware of all that - in which case why did you not act - or if not, why not?"

Johnson replied: "None of those things were put to me in the way you've just done. What I saw was a country that needed continuous, urgent action and needed solutions to be found.

"I wanted meetings where people could speak their mind without fear of being embarrassed. That's one of the reasons why I sometimes spoke bluntly and freely in meetings - I wanted people to feel they could do the same."

After senior advisers told Johnson that the Department for Health and Social Care was struggling in mid-2020, the former Prime Minister considered health secretary Matt Hancock's future.

"I thought, in the circumstances, Matt Hancock was doing a good job," he said. "He is intellectually able and whatever his failings may or may not have been, I did not see any advantage to the country in moving him in exchange for someone else when I couldn't be sure we would be trading up.

"Of course I thought about it - but we took control and the management of the pandemic was essentially centralised in Number 10. I didn't stick by him for any reason other than that I thought, on the whole, he was doing a good job."

Meanwhile, Dominic Cummings said in his evidence that "leaving him [Hancock] there guaranteed further disasters and deaths in the autumn. His political secretary told me the Prime Minister wanted to keep Hancock as the sacrifice for the inquiry."

"I don't remember that at all. It's nonsense," said Johnson.

"Another long day tomorrow," warns Baroness Hallett.