Domshell accusations: 'Tens of thousands died needlessly'

Domshell accusations: ‘Tens of thousands died needlessly thanks to No10’. ‘Shopping trolley’ Boris unfit to be PM and Carrie ‘crackers’. ‘Serial liar’ Hancock should have been fired 20 times… But advisor admits he DIDN’T tell truth about roadtrip

Cummings claimed Boris Johnson ‘s ‘disastrous’ handling of the pandemic had cost tens of thousands of lives
He told MPs that senior ministers and advisers, including himself, had fallen ‘disastrously short’
Mr Cummings launched attacks on Mr Johnson, Carrie Symonds and Health Secretary Matt Hancock
He said the Health Secretary ‘should have been fired for at least 15 to 20 things, including lying’

Dominic Cummings yesterday claimed Boris Johnson’s ‘disastrous’ handling of the pandemic had cost tens of thousands of lives.

Launching a dramatic bid to bring down the Prime Minister, he blamed a toxic mix of complacency and indecision for the needless deaths.

He told MPs that senior ministers and advisers, including himself, had fallen ‘disastrously short’, adding: ‘When the public needed us most, the Government failed. Tens of thousands of people died, who didn’t need to die.’

In an extraordinary seven-hour performance, Mr Cummings launched vicious attacks on Mr Johnson, his fiancée Carrie Symonds and Health Secretary Matt Hancock over their personal conduct during the crisis. Mr Cummings claimed the Prime Minister had been ‘unfit’ for office when Covid struck and was not a ‘fit and proper person’ to lead Britain out of the pandemic.

He said the Prime Minister had dismissed Covid as a ‘scare story’, leading to delays in bringing in lockdowns, which cost many thousands of lives. And he claimed to have heard Mr Johnson rant that he would rather see dead bodies ‘piled high in their thousands’ than order a third lockdown last autumn – a claim the PM has denied.

The former Vote Leave boss also launched a blistering attack on Mr Hancock, accusing him of ‘criminal, disgraceful behaviour’.

Dominic Cummings claimed Boris Johnson’s ‘disastrous’ handling of the pandemic had cost tens of thousands of lives

He said the Health Secretary ‘should have been fired for at least 15 to 20 things, including lying’.

He alleged Mr Hancock had lied to the PM over the disastrous policy of not testing older people for Covid before they were discharged from hospital into care homes

Mr Cummings also fired grenades at Miss Symonds. He said she had diverted the Prime Minister’s attention from critical lockdown decisions in March last year by going ‘completely crackers’ about a newspaper story claiming the couple hated their dog, Dilyn. And he claimed she had interfered in a key No 10 appointment in a way that was ‘not only completely unethical but which was also clearly illegal’.

Last night, furious senior Tories blasted back at Mr Cummings, who quit No 10 after a losing a power struggle with Miss Symonds last year. They said he appeared more interested in ‘settling scores’ than getting to the truth.

Mr Hancock will publicly hit back at a Downing Street press conference today where he is expected to directly address the most contentious claims.

One ally last night branded Mr Cummings a ‘total hypocrite’ for criticising Mr Hancock’s drive to increase Covid testing, while also saying that initial testing capacity had been woefully inadequate.

The ally flatly denied that Mr Hancock had lied about care home policy, but acknowledged it had taken longer than anyone wanted to introduce testing because of a shortage of capacity.

Mr Cummings also appeared to undermine his own credibility yesterday by changing his explanation for his notorious lockdown-busting trip to Durham at the height of the restrictions last year.

On a day of astonishing political theatre, Mr Cummings:

Admitted No 10 was ‘not in any way on a war footing’ for Covid in February last year, adding: ‘A lot of key people were literally skiing … the PM was on holiday for two weeks’;
Claimed Mr Johnson was so unconcerned about Covid that he suggested Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty inject him on live TV;
Offered an apology to the families of those who ‘died unnecessarily’;
Said the then Cabinet secretary Sir Mark Sedwill had urged Mr Johnson to encourage ‘chicken pox’ parties to spread the virus as part of a herd immunity strategy;
Claimed the Prime Minister was too distracted by money worries and his impending engagement to focus on the pandemic;
Complained the Cobra committee ‘leaked like a sieve’, but squirmed when asked about his own role in leaking;
Described the Cabinet Office’s contingency plan for a pandemic as ‘terrifyingly s***’;
Fuelled speculation he hopes to return to government if Rishi Sunak becomes PM by heaping praise on the Chancellor;
Revealed the initial plan for handling Covid would have seen daily deaths top 4,000 a day and led to a collapse in NHS services;
Alleged the Prime Minister ‘came close’ to sacking Mr Hancock because of failings over testing and PPE;
Suggested the Government would have been better off ‘with a kind of dictator in charge’.

Mr Cummings said that despite the panic, the Government remained obsessed with matters such as a military request from Donald Trump and Carrie Symonds’ anger over reports about her dog Dilyn

In one of the most remarkable performances ever seen at a Commons select committee, Mr Cummings painted a picture of a shambolic response to the looming pandemic.

He said that preparations, which were meant to have been a top priority, were close to useless. And he said that ‘groupthink’ meant both ministers and officials believed the public would never accept lockdown measures of the kind seen in China and Taiwan.

Instead, he said, they pursued a policy of trying to slow infections in the hope that the population would develop a degree of herd immunity.

By mid-March, it became clear that the plan would lead to more than 500,000 deaths and overwhelm the NHS for months, leaving it unable to provide even basic services. Mr Cummings said he told Mr Johnson on March 12 – eleven days before the lockdown – that he had to change course and issue an immediate ‘stay at home’ order.

The following day, the deputy Cabinet Secretary Helen Macnamara allegedly told him: ‘I think we are absolutely f*****, I think this country is headed for disaster, I think we’re going to kill thousands of people.’

Mr Cummings said the final realisation that the policy was disastrous 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’.’

In the Commons yesterday, Mr Johnson denied complacency and said: ‘The handling of this pandemic has been one of the most difficult things this country has had to do in a very long time.

‘We have, at every stage, tried to minimise loss of life.’

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer challenged him, saying: ‘Either his former adviser is telling the truth, in which case the Prime Minister should answer the allegations, or the Prime Minister has to suggest that his former adviser is not telling the truth, which raises serious questions about the Prime Minister’s judgment in appointing him in the first place.’

Tory former minister Tobias Ellwood said the claims made by Mr Cummings were ‘all about score settling’.

Matt Hancock outside his home in north west London following Dominic Cummings’ bombshell evidence to MPs

Panic ‘was like an out-of-control movie. Aliens land … and your whole plan is broken’: Cummings’ Blitzkrieg, blow by blow

By Daniel Martin Policy Editor for the Daily Mail

Across a marathon seven hours of evidence to MPs yesterday, Dominic Cummings attempted to eviscerate a government machine he said was completely unprepared for the scale or severity of the coronavirus crisis.

Making his long-awaited appearance before a Commons select committee, the Prime Minister’s former chief adviser unleashed a relentless salvo of astonishing allegations about the individuals and processes he claimed resulted in ‘total system failure’.

He said Boris Johnson, his ministers – particularly the Health Secretary Matt Hancock – and officials all fell ‘disastrously short’ as they grappled to deal with the pandemic.

Mr Cummings began the session with an apology for his own failings and those of the rest of the Government.

He claimed Whitehall complacency in the early part of last year saw senior figures jetting off to the ski slopes as the crisis unfolded.

Mr Cummings likened the panicked scenes in government to those from an ‘out-of-control movie’ similar to 1996 disaster film Independence Day, in which the US is devastated by a surprise alien invasion. And he revealed that at one point, a senior official warned in a message that the country was ‘absolutely f***ed’.

Here, Policy Editor DANIEL MARTIN selects the highlights of one of the most extraordinary Commons appearances for many years:

Ministers fell ‘disastrously short’ of standards

Dominic Cummings began the evidence session by apologising to the British public, saying that ministers, officials – and he himself – had not met the standards that were expected of them.

The former adviser, who left Downing Street last year after a behind-the-scenes power struggle, said: ‘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.

‘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.’

Whitehall was not on a ‘war footing’

As the global crisis mounted in February 2020, there was no sense of urgency in Whitehall – and some senior figures even went on holiday, he said. Mr Cummings told MPs: ‘The Government and No10 was not operating on a war footing in February on this in any way, shape or form.

‘Lots of key people were literally skiing in the middle of February. It wasn’t until the last week of February that there was any sort of sense of urgency, I would say.’

Mr Cummings admitted that he was also ‘not on a war footing’ himself in the first half of February as he was dealing with other priorities such as the Cabinet reshuffle and the HS2 railway line.

To top it all, ‘then the PM went away on holiday for two weeks’.

‘Groupthink’ over herd immunity strategy

Mr Hancock will publicly hit back at a Downing Street press conference today where he is expected to directly address the most contentious claims

Mr Cummings said he was concerned about the ‘groupthink’ of government scientists and officials, which led to an early strategy to control but not halt the spread of the virus.

He told MPs that senior figures believed it was inevitable that there would have to be some sort of herd immunity, as there was no plan in place to try to suppress the spread of the virus.

He claimed Sir Mark Sedwill, the then Cabinet Secretary, 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.’

The former aide said most people were of the view that the freedom-loving British public would simply not accept the restrictions of a lockdown.

‘One of the critical things that was completely wrong in the whole official thinking, in Sage [the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies] and in the Department of Health in February/March was first of all the British public will not accept a lockdown, secondly, the British public will not accept what was thought of as a kind of East Asian-style track and trace type system, and the infringement of liberty around that,’ he said.

‘Those two assumptions were completely central to the official plan and were both obviously completely wrong.’

He told MPs the country should have locked down in the first week of March 2020 at the latest, but the ‘official logic’ even on March 17 was that this would only cause a peak of the virus later on, potentially in the winter when the NHS would already be under pressure.

Panic mounts ahead of the first lockdown

In the days leading up to the first Covid lockdown, Mr Cummings described the chaos in Downing Street as like an ‘out-of-control movie’.

He claimed the lack of any action plan was similar to 1996 disaster film Independence Day in which the US is devastated by a sudden alien invasion, and compared his data expert colleague Ben Warner to Jeff Goldblum’s scientist in the film whose warnings were ignored.

‘This is 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’.’

On March 12, Mr Cummings said he texted the Prime Minister at 7.48am saying: ‘We’ve got big problems coming.

‘The Cabinet Office is terrifyingly s***, no plans, totally behind the pace, we must announce today, not next week, ‘If you feel ill with cold or flu stay at home’.’

He said he had a meeting with his advisers ‘when they kind of hit the total panic button with me and they said, ‘We’re looking at all this data, we’re looking at all of these graphs, we’re heading for a total catastrophe and we need to have Plan B’.’

Mr Cummings said that on the evening of March 13 it was realised that a meeting would need to be held with Mr Johnson to explain: ‘We’re going to have to ditch the whole official plan, we’re heading for the biggest disaster this country has seen since 1940.’

That is the year when British forces were evacuated from Dunkirk weeks before the fall of France – Britain’s darkest hour. He claimed the deputy cabinet secretary, Helen MacNamara, said on the same day: ‘I think we are absolutely f***ed, I think this country is heading for disaster, I think we’re going to kill thousands of people.’

Distracted by Trump and Dilyn the dog

Mr Cummings said that despite the panic, the Government remained obsessed with matters such as a military request from Donald Trump and Carrie Symonds’ anger over reports about her dog Dilyn.

On March 12 – less than two weeks before lockdown – ‘suddenly, the national security people came in and said, ‘Trump wants us to join a bombing campaign in the Middle East tonight’.’

‘So everything to do with Cobra that day on Covid was completely disrupted because you had these two parallel sets of meetings. And then to add to it, it sounds so surreal it couldn’t possibly be true, that day The Times had run a huge story about the Prime Minister and his girlfriend and their dog, and the Prime Minister’s girlfriend was going completely crackers about this story and demanding that the press office deal with that.

‘So, we have this sort of completely insane situation in which part of the building was saying, ‘Are we going to bomb Iraq?’, part of the building was arguing about whether or not we’re going to do quarantine or not do quarantine, the Prime Minister has his girlfriend going crackers about something completely trivial.’

Health Minister Matt Hancock with members of the media outside his home in north west London, May 26

Problems with the test and trace system

The Government ‘left it too long’ to set up a functioning test and trace system, Mr Cummings said.

He told MPs that the system should have been set up in January but by April, when moves were being made, ‘the system was hugely distracted’ by Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s promise to increase testing to 100,000 a day across the country.

‘The problem is that between January and roughly mid-March, everyone was thinking, ‘Well, given we’re doing one single peak, herd immunity by September, there’s no point building up this whole thing’,’ he said.

Failures over personal protective equipment

Mr Cummings was highly critical of the Government’s failure to procure enough PPE for health and care home staff during the crisis.

He said that while Donald Trump was ordering the CIA to ‘gazump’ rival countries on orders for personal protective equipment, the Department of Health and Social Care was still trying to get orders from China by ship.

‘There were lots of great people in it but the procurement system which they were operating was just completely hopeless,’ he said.

‘There wasn’t any system set up to deal with proper emergency procurement.’

Mr Cummings said he was told vital masks and gloves were being sent by sea because it is ‘what we always do’. He said: ‘Hang on, we are going to have a peak in the NHS around about mid-April, and you are shipping things from China that are going to arrive in months’ time and all the aeroplanes are not flying?

‘Leave this meeting, commandeer the planes, fly them to China, drop them at the nearest airfield, pick up our stuff, fly it back. The whole system was just like wading through treacle.’

Dom’s whiteboard of doom

Dominic Cummings began his day by publishing a photograph of a whiteboard, reportedly in Boris Johnson’s No 10 study, which illustrates the sense of panic at the start of the crisis.

The PM’s former chief adviser said the picture, taken on the evening of March 13 – ten days before the first lockdown – reveals the early stage of the Government’s planning.

It appears to show No 10 was bracing itself for thousands of deaths and that officials even feared they would have to decide ‘who not to save’.

And it reveals that lockdown was seen as a ‘Plan B’, with the preferred plan being to rough out the pandemic.

Here are the key points:

Lockdown only way to save NHS

Officials believed there was no chance of a vaccine being ready in the year 2020, meaning that the only way to prevent a collapse of the NHS would be a ‘lockdown’, under which everyone is told to stay at home and pubs are shut.

Tougher Plan B takes shape

This section lays out the difference between the PM’s original plan – to ride out the pandemic – and a Plan B, under which a ‘full lockdown’ would be imposed to avoid the ‘collapse’ of the NHS. A sketch of a graph suggests Plan B would escape two waves of the virus.

Boris’s Plan A is fatally flawed

The notes seem to suggest that Mr Johnson’s favoured plan at the time – to attempt to ride out the Covid crisis without imposing a lockdown – would cost as many as 4,000 lives a day at the peak. A further note references ventilators, of which there was an acute shortage in the NHS at the time.

Ban on social contact touted

These three options outline how stringent any social distancing rules may be, with the most serious suggestion being that any contact at all could be made illegal.

Dire life and death decision

The message ‘Who not to save?’ indicates that it was at least considered that some vulnerable people could be sacrificed to help the rest

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