The claim, branded “horrific” by bereaved families, emerged from notebooks kept by Imran Shafi, Johnson’s private secretary for public service, during the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, an investigation that has been set up to examine the UK’s response to and impact of the pandemic.

The inquiry heard that Johnson had earlier said the “biggest damage [from Covid will be] done by overreaction” during a meeting on 28 February 2020 where lockdown restrictions were discussed.

Shafi said under questioning that Johnson “definitely did not want a lockdown” in March 2020, despite being aware that the worst case scenario of hundreds of thousands of deaths was becoming increasingly likely. But he agreed by 2 March 2020 that “control had been lost” and that “nothing short of a lockdown would suffice”.

It would be another three weeks before a UK-wide lockdown would be announced.