Covid: Delta variant now accounts for 91% of new cases in the UK, Matt Hancock reveals

Good morning, welcome to NationalWorld’s coverage of health secretary Matt Hancock’s appearance at the joint Health and Social Care, and Science and Technology select committee.

MPs, including former health secretary Jeremy Hunt, will begin the grilling at 9:30, in a session which is expected to go much longer than usual -- though it almost certainly won’t go on as long as the Dominic Cummings session two weeks ago.

With the serving health secretary sat in front of them as part of an inquiry titled Coronavirus: Lessons Learnt, MPs were unlikely to struggle for questions, but Cummings’ testimony will have provided an abundance of ammunition.

Expect to hear a number of Cummings’ allegations brought up this morning, perhaps most importantly the claim that Hancock knowingly lied about care home residents being protected.

In case you’re not content to just read our coverage of the session, you can tune in live on BBC Parliament, or directly on Parliament Live, using this link https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/f6726bde-a69a-40e6-bbc1-de76b90f3cca

In case you missed it two weeks ago, here are some of the most important takeaways from Dominic Cummings’ testimony to the same inquiry.

- Cummings left No 10 believing Boris Johnson ‘unfit’ to be Prime Minister

- The Prime Minister is alleged not to have taken the threat of the virus seriously

- A second lockdown delay in the autumn led to ‘tens of thousands’ of extra deaths

- Mr Cummings continually called for Health Secretary Matt Hancock to be fired while working in No 10

- The Government’s argument that care homes were protected from the virus was ‘complete nonsense’

- His trip to Durham and subsequent ‘eyesight test’ in Barnard Castle was a ‘major disaster’

- Ministers and officials believed herd immunity was an ‘inevitability’

You can read a more in-depth recap of that session here.

While we’re talking about Dominic Cummings, it’s worth mentioning the high court judgement from yesterday, which found the government acted unlawfully when it gave a lucrative contract to a firm run by a friend of Cummings.

You can read our full coverage of the decision here, but the judge’s ruling is below

Mrs Justice O’Farrell said: “The fair-minded and informed observer would have appreciated that there was an urgent need for research through focus groups on effective communications in response to the Covid-19 crisis and that those research services were required immediately.

“The fair-minded and informed observer would have appreciated that it was vital that the results and conclusions from the research were reliable and that Mr Cummings was uniquely placed, given his experience and expertise, to form a rapid view on which organisation might best be able to deliver those urgent requirements.

“His professional and personal connections with Public First did not preclude him from making an impartial assessment in this regard.”

“However, the defendant’s failure to consider any other research agency, by reference to experience, expertise, availability or capacity, would lead a fair-minded and informed observer to conclude that there was a real possibility, or a real danger, that the decision-maker was biased.

“(The) claimant has established its case that the circumstances in which the contract was awarded to Public First gave rise to apparent bias.”

Here’s what allies of the health secretary have been briefing ahead of his select committee appearance, as per Politico’s Playbook: “It’s simple — Matt will provide clear, detailed answers to the questions put to him. As he has done throughout, he will give an account of the actions taken to protect the NHS, save lives and get the country out of this unprecedented pandemic as quickly as possible.”

The committee hearing is now underway.

Committee chair Greg Clark says Dominic Cummings was unable or unwilling to evidence his claims against Hancock, and has not given an explanation for not doing so.

Clark says he’ll now put some of the allegations to Hancock, though clarifies they are not the committee’s allegations.

Asked whether he has lied to Boris Johnson, Hancock says, “no”.

Asked whether he said “everyone who needed treatment got the treatment they required” when he’d been told otherwise by the chief medical officer.

Hancock says he did say that everybody got treatment they needed, says he is very proud of that.

He says there was no point at which he was advised that people were not getting treatment they needed

“On the contrary, one of the things we succeeded in doing is protecting the NHS, so people have always had access to treatment.”

Asked whether he briefed that issues with procurement were the fault of NHS head Simon Stevens of the Chancellor, Hancock says it is “not a fair recollection of the situation”.

Cummings claimed that an investigation by the cabinet secretary found Hancock was responsible for issues with the procurement of PPE. He also claimed the cabinet secretary said he had lost trust in the health secretary.

Hancock says he doesn’t recall this.

Clark asks: “Did you tell the PM in March that people would be tested before they went back into care homes?”

Hancock says, “People would be tested when tests were available. Then I set about building test capacity to be able to deliver on that.

“The clinical advise set out three different reasons we followed the approach we did.”

He says the challenges weren’t just about testing capacity but also the potential for false-negatives among those not showing symptoms.

He says there was a also a concern about people held in hospital picking up the virus while they wait, then going to a care home with a negative test despite carrying the disease.

Clark asks if there is “Anything you’d like to add to Cummings’ testimony?”

Hancock says it is telling that no evidence has been provided.

He says “throughout this I have got out of bed every morning with the view and the attitude that my job is to do everything I could to save lives and get this country out of the pandemic”.

He says he has tried to do that with an approach of honesty.

Asked why he believes Cummings chose to be so “withering” in his testimony, and whether this was a result of personal animosity between them or a genuine policy dispute, Hancock says he has “no idea”.

“I worked directly with the PM from the start of this, and of course I worked with his aides and his team as well... I have no idea.”

Clark asks whether Hancock knew Cummings wanted the PM to fire him. Hancock says yes, “because he briefed the newspapers at the time”.

He says he had the PM’s “wholesome support” throughout this period.

Cummings did claim that the PM was close to sacking Hancock, but didn’t do it, because he’d been advised that the health secretary would be the best person to sack after a Covid inquiry.