Dominic Cummings’ select committee LIVE: Boris Johnson’s former adviser appears before MPs | Cummings says people died unnecessarily because of Government failings | Grant Shapps accuses Cummings appearance as 'sideshow' | One year on from Barnard Castle press conference
The Prime Minister’s former chief advisor has been vocal in his condemnation of Boris Johnson Health Secretary Matt Hancock, and others since leaving Government after a behind-the-scenes power struggle in November.
You can follow all the updates here as Cummings gives evidence to a joint inquiry of the Commons Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees.
Dominic Cummings’ select committee RECAP: Boris Johnson’s former adviser appears before MPs
Key Events
- Dominic Cummings claims Boris Johnson suggested getting injected with coronavirus ‘live on TV’
- Cummings says Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, should have been fired for “lying”.
- Cummings claims PM described Covid as “new swine flu”
- “We fell disastrously short of standards,” says Cummings
Dominic Cummings said the situation in Downing Street in mid-March was like “a scene from Independence Day with Jeff Goldblum saying the aliens are here and your whole plan is broken and you need a new plan”.
Mr Cummings said on March 14 Boris Johnson was told that models showing the peak was “weeks and weeks and weeks away” in June were “completely wrong”.
He said the PM was warned: “The NHS is going to be smashed in weeks, really we’ve got days to act.”
Dominic Cummings has said that Matt Hancock should have been fired for multiple offences, a move he said that the then cabinet secretary also recommended.
The former chief aide to the Prime Minister told the Commons committee: “Like in much of the Government system, there were many brilliant people at relatively junior and middle levels who were terribly let down by senior leadership.
“I think the Secretary of State for Health should’ve been fired for at least 15, 20 things, including lying to everybody on multiple occasions in meeting after meeting in the Cabinet room and publicly.
“There’s no doubt at all that many senior people performed far, far disastrously below the standards which the country has a right to expect. I think the Secretary of State for Health is certainly one of those people.
“I said repeatedly to the Prime Minister that he should be fired, so did the cabinet secretary, so did many other senior people.”
Dominic Cummings said one of Matt Hancock’s lies was that everybody got the treatment they deserved in the first peak when “many people were left to die in horrific circumstances”.
Asked to provide evidence of the Health Secretary’s lying, the former chief aide to the Prime Minister told the Commons committee: “There are numerous examples. I mean in the summer he said that everybody who needed treatment got the treatment that they required.
“He knew that that was a lie because he had been briefed by the chief scientific adviser and the chief medical officer himself about the first peak, and we were told explicitly people did not get the treatment they deserved, many people were left to die in horrific circumstances.”
Picture taken from the Twitter feed of Dominic Cummings of an image of a whiteboard on which the Government's "plan B" for the first wave of coronavirus was sketched out.
Dominic Cummings said that then cabinet secretary Lord Mark Sedwill told Boris Johnson he had lost confidence in Matt Hancock’s honesty.
The former chief aide to the Prime Minister told the Commons committee: “In mid-April, just before the Prime Minister and I were diagnosed with having Covid ourselves, the Secretary of State for Health told us in the Cabinet room everything is fine with PPE, we’ve got it all covered, etc, etc.
“When I came back, almost the first meeting I had in the Cabinet room was about the disaster over PPE and how we were actually completely short, hospitals all over the country were running out.
“The Secretary of State said in that meeting this is the fault of Simon Stevens, this is the fault of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it’s not my fault, they’ve blocked approvals on all sorts of things.
“I said to the cabinet secretary, please investigate this and find out if it’s true.
“The cabinet secretary came back to me and said it’s completely untrue, I’ve lost confidence in the Secretary of State’s honesty in these meetings.
“The cabinet secretary said that to me and the cabinet secretary said that to the Prime Minister.”
Mr Cummings said that he made a note of the comments and would supply it to the committee.
Dominic Cummings said it was “completely crackers” Boris Johnson was in charge and that thousands of people in the country could provide better leadership than the Prime Minister.
Mr Cummings said the fact that the public had to choose between Mr Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn in the 2019 election meant it was clear that the electoral system had “gone extremely, extremely badly wrong”.
“There’s so many thousands and thousands of wonderful people in this country who could provide better leadership than either of those two,” he said.
“And there’s obviously something terribly wrong with the political parties if that’s the best that they can do.”
He also said that “in any sensible, rational government” he would have not had the power he did.
“It is completely crazy that I should have been in such a senior position in my personal opinion,” he said.
“I’m not smart. I’ve not built great things in the world.
“It’s just completely crackers that someone like me should have been in there, just the same as it’s crackers that Boris Johnson was in there, and that the choice at the last election was Jeremy Corbyn.
“It’s also the case that there are wonderful people inside the Civil Service, there are brilliant, brilliant officials all over the place. But the system tends to weed them out from senior management jobs.
“And the problem in this crisis was very much lions led by donkeys over and over again.”
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