Live: Matt Hancock 'should have been fired for at least 15, 20 things, including lying' - Dominic Cummings
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The Prime Minister’s former chief adviser said Health Secretary Matt Hancock should have been fired over coronavirus failings and “criminal, disgraceful behaviour” on the testing target.
Dominic Cummings also said Whitehall’s top official recommended to the Prime Minister that Mr Hancock should be sacked.
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Hide AdDowning Street did not deny that the Prime Minister considered sacking Mr Hancock in April last year but insisted Boris Johnson has confidence in the Health Secretary now.
Mr Cummings said there were around 20 reasons why Mr Hancock should have been thrown out of the Cabinet – including, he claimed, lying both in meetings and publicly.
He said Mr Hancock performed “disastrously” below the standards expected and the cabinet secretary – the country’s top civil servant – recommended the Health Secretary should be sacked.
“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,” Mr Cummings said.
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PM believed coronavirus was like ‘swine flu’
He also told MPs that Mr Johnson believed coronavirus was like “swine flu” and people died unnecessarily because of Government failings during the pandemic.
The Prime Minister’s former aide apologised to the public, saying that ministers, officials and advisers had fallen “disastrously short” of the standards they should expect in a crisis.
Mr Cummings said the Prime Minister was more concerned about the impact on the economy than the need to curb the spread of coronavirus in the weeks leading up to the first lockdown.
The former adviser, who left Downing Street last year after a behind-the-scenes power struggle, told the MPs: “The truth is that senior ministers, senior officials, senior advisers like me fell disastrously short of the standards that the public has a right to expect of its Government in a crisis like this.
“When the public needed us most, the Government failed.
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Hide Ad“I would like to say to all the families of those who died unnecessarily how sorry I am for the mistakes that were made and for my own mistakes at that.”
What else Dominic Cummings said
In a series of explosive claims, Mr Cummings said:
– The Government was not operating on a “war footing” in February 2020 as the global crisis mounted, with the Prime Minister on holiday and “lots of key people were literally skiing”.
– Mr Johnson thought Covid-19 was just a “scare story” and the “new swine flu” and it was suggested chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty should inject him with the virus on live TV.
– Herd immunity from people catching the disease was thought to be inevitable because there was no plan to try to suppress the spread of the virus.
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Hide Ad– Cabinet secretary Sir Mark Sedwill told the Prime Minister to go on TV and explain the herd immunity plan by saying “it’s like the old chicken pox parties, we need people to get this disease because that’s how we get herd immunity by September”.
PM’s former adviser Dominic Cummings gives evidence on the government’s handling of the pandemic
Symonds accused of unethical and illegal behaviour over No10 hiring
On Carrie Symonds’ role in his decision to quit Downing Street, Cummings said: “My resignation was definitely connected to the fact that the prime minister’s girlfriend was trying to change a whole bunch of different appointments at No10 and appoint her friends to particular jobs.
“In particular, she was trying to overturn the outcome of an official process about hiring a particular job in a way which was not only completely unethical but also clearly illegal.
“I thought the whole process about how the prime minister was behaving at that point was appalling and all of that was definitely part of why I went.”
Cummings says he should have threatened to resign publicly over second lockdown
Cummings says the thing he got wrong and “terribly regrets” now, is not threatening to publicly resign to try and force the PM into action on a second lockdown.
“I ought to have said to him then, ‘I’m resigning in 48 hours, we can do this one way or the other way, if you announce that you’re going to have a lockdown and take serious action now I will leave, go quietly, we’re all friends. If you don’t I’ll call a press conference and say the prime minister’s making a terrible decision and its going to kill thousands of people’.
“I should have gambled on holding a gun to his head essentially. And who knows if that would have worked or not, but fundamentally it was all upside given that my role was basically done at that point.
“So I apologise for not trying that.”
Paul Bristow MP prompts another string of apologies from daytime news-readers as he quotes verbatim this message (below) in his questioning of Dominic Cummings.
Hancock “used” Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty
Hancock “used Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty as shields for himself,” says Cummings.
“He used the whole ‘we’re following the science’ as a way so he could always say ‘well if things go wrong we can just blame the scientists and say its not my fault’.
“I saw him discuss that with the prime minister and I think it was one of the many appalling things that Hancock did.”
Hancock, Raab and Sunak get their report cards
Cummings says that Dominic Raab has not received enough credit for how he handled the situation when the PM was ill.
He says there were conversations about how the PM would be replaced if he’d died, that’s how serious the situation was.
He also says Rishi Sunak performed well throughout the pandemic.
Cummings says Johnson was told he shouldn’t sack Hancock, because “he’s the person you fire when the inquiry comes along”.
He also claims he called for Hancock to be sacked every week, sometimes every day.
Cummings says he will look at publishing some of the evidence he has that Hancock has lied, though he says he is wary of publishing private messages.
“What I think should happen, I think far better than me randomly throwing Whatsapps out onto the internet, is that you the MPs should force the MPs... MPs have the power to force the government to face up to this reality.”
Committee Chair Greg Clark says it is a specific requirement that Cummings evidences the claim about Hancock lying.
Gove, like Sunak, escapes the wrath of Cummings
“I don’t think really that Gove had a huge amount of responsibility in a sense for this.
“It’s not like Gove is in charge of government procurement.”
Sarah Owen MP pushes back on this, saying he is the minister responsible for the department responsible for procurement.
“I’m sure he would say that he has made some mistakes on this, but at the heart of this, we went into this with the wrong system.
Johnson not “fit and proper person” to lead
Sarah Owen MP asks whether Cummings thinks he has done his job properly.
He says : “I think there’s no doubt whatsoever that there’s many thousands of people in this country who could have done my job much better than me. That’s unarguable.”
She follows by asking whether he thinks “Boris Johnson is a fit and proper person” to get us through the pandemic?
“No,” he says.