Dominic Cummings evidence key claims: Matt Hancock should have been sacked for at least 15-20 things including frequently lying, and Boris Johnson not fit to be PM

Dominic Cummings has today branded health secretary Matt Hancock a serial liar as he gives evidence against the UK Government’s handling of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Prime minister Boris Johnson’s former chief aide made a number of explosive claims to a joint session of the Commons Heath, and Science and Technology committees.

Here, we take a look at some of the key points from his evidence so far:

“Matt Hancock should have been fired”

Cummings said he was pushing for a system which would have allowed the government to look at positive test cases and consider bank data, phone data, to triangulate where people were and what they were doing.

He said the EU stopped this kind of data retention and examination by government, because of GDPR rules.

Considering how test and trace data was to be implemented “should have been looked at in January,” Cummings tells MPs.

Jeremy Hunt asked if Cummings took responsibility for this delay.

“I blame myself for many, many, many things in this whole crisis,” Cummings responded.

“I said repeatedly from February/March, if we don’t fire the Secretary of State [Matt Hancock]… we are going to kill people and it is going to be a catastrophe.”

He added:  “[Matt Hancock] should have been fired for at 15 to 20 things.

“I think there is no doubt at all that many senior people performed far, far – disastrously below the standards which the country has the right to expect. I think that 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.”

“Boris Johnson not fit to lead”

Cummings also said that Boris Johnson was not fit to lead the country and that thousands of people in the country could provide better leadership than the Prime Minister.

He  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.”

“Johnson said he would be injected with Coronavirus on live TV”

Cummings also said that the prime minister had originally regarded Coronavirus as a scare story and had not taken it seriously, describing it as the “new swine flu.”

When asked if he had told the prime minister it was not, Cummings said: “Certainly, but the view of various officials inside Number 10 was if we have the prime minister chairing Cobra meetings and he just tells everyone ‘it’s swine flu, don’t worry about it, I’m going to get (Chief Medical Officer) Chris Whitty to inject me live on TV with coronavirus so everyone realises it’s nothing to be frightened of’, that would not help actually serious panic.”

“Herd immunity was always part of the plan”

Cummings said he is “completely baffled” as to why No 10 has tried to deny that herd immunity was the official plan early last year.

The former chief aide to the Prime Minister told the Commons committee: “It’s not that people were thinking this is a good thing and we actively want it, it’s that it’s a complete inevitability and the only real question it’s one of timing, it’s either one of herd immunity by September or it’s herd immunity by January after a second peak. That was the assumption up until Friday March 13.”

He said that Health Secretary Matt Hancock was “completely wrong” on March 15 to say herd immunity was not part of the plan.

“That was the plan. I’m completely baffled as to why No 10 has tried to deny that because that was the official plan,” Cummings said.