Speaking to MPs, the PM's former closest confidant described what went wrong in the first and second lockdowns in Britain.
"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", Cummings said.
Cummings told MPs that when the British public "needed us most, the government failed". He added that Western countries, including the UK, had failed to see the COVID-19 crisis brewing.
Our session has started. We're hearing from Dominic Cummings, former Chief Adviser to the Prime Minister.
— Science and Technology Committee (@CommonsSTC) May 26, 2021
Watch at the broadcast below or here: https://t.co/5Oi6aZdCLa
https://t.co/zaISV4Oqb8
TIMING
The World Health Organisation declared the COVID-19 outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020, and a pandemic on 11 March 2020.
However, Cummings told MPs that he didn't devote much time to the COVID issue in January. He spent less than half of his time on it before 12 February and by the last ten days of the month, the pandemic took over 90% of his time.
He added that Number 10 "was not operating on a war footing" in February and "lots of people were skiing". It wasn't until the last week of February that there was any sense of urgency in Westminster, Cummings said.
Questioned by the Chair of Science and Technology Select Committee Greg Clark, Cummings said that he could share with lawmakers the texts and WhatsApp messages to the PM about COVID during early 2020.
When speaking about his attendance at Cobra meetings, where matters of national emergency are handled, Cummings said he didn't want to talk during them "because there were too many leaks".
New Swine Flu
Cummings told the sessions that at the beginning of the pandemic, PM Johnson considered COVID-19 to be a "scare story" in February 2020.
"The basic thought was that in February the prime minister regarded this as just a scare story... he described it as the new swine flu", Cummings told lawmakers.
According to Cummings, the PM was so sceptical about the threat from COVID in early 2020 that he considered getting injected with coronavirus live on TV to prove it wasn't dangerous.
"The view of various officials inside Number 10 was, if we have the prime minister chairing COBR meetings and he just tells everyone this is swine flu, don't worry about it and I'm going to get (Chief Medical Officer) Chris Whitty to inject me live on TV with coronavirus ... that would not help", Cummings told lawmakers.
Herd immunity
The government's initial analysis of the pandemic led to talks about herd immunity, which was assumed by politicians to be a "complete inevitability".
Cummings said that at the time Whitehall assumed the British public would not accept strict restrictions like those seen in Wuhan, Singapore, and Taiwan.
The choice, in the government's March assessment, was to allow the virus to spread to achieve herd immunity by September or "flatten" the virus for an even worse peak in the winter.
"No one wants this to happen, but the point was herd immunity was regarded as an unavoidable fact, the only question we had was one of timing", he said.
Cummings told the committees that Johnson's ministers pointed to a TV screen showing images of Italy in early 2020 to show the PM that a lockdown was needed.
No Plan
On the evening of 13 March, Cummings was with data scientists Ben Warner and the PM's private secretary in the PM's study. The three officials discussed what they would tell Johnson the next day about the plan out of the crisis. A white board in the room had a Plan B sketched on it.
65/ First sketch of Plan B, PM study, Fri 13/3 eve - shown PM Sat 14/4: NB. Plan A 'our plan' breaks NHS,>4k p/day dead min.Plan B: lockdown, suppress, crash programs (tests/treatments/vaccines etc), escape 1st AND 2nd wave (squiggly line instead of 1 or 2 peaks)... details later pic.twitter.com/IRl0M3swSl
— Dominic Cummings (@Dominic2306) May 26, 2021
Cummings said "the second most powerful official in the country, Helen MacNamara" walked into the room and quoted Mark Sweeny, who was in charge of coordinating with the Department of Health and who said:
"I've been told for years we have a plan for this, there is no plan. We are in huge trouble".
MacNamara then told Cummings and the other officials in the room:
"I've come here to tell you all, I think we are absolutely f****d".
Cummings said that on the 14th of March "we said to the prime minister: 'you are going to have to lockdown' - but there is no lockdown plan, it doesn't exist".
'Hancock lying to everybody'
Labour MP Rosie Cooper asked Cummings how he would rate the performance of the Department of Health in response to the pandemic.
Cummings said there were some brilliant people who were let down by those in senior leadership positions. He told the committees that UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock should have been fired for repeated mistakes.
"I think that the secretary of state for health (Hancock), should have been fired for at least 15, 20 things including lying to everybody in multiple occasions in meeting after meeting in the cabinet room and publicly".
When Hancock said that all patients got the treatment they needed during the first peak of of the pandemic, according to Cummings, it was contrary to briefings from the government's health experts, who had said that not all patients received the required care.
Cummings also suggested that when Hancock told officials that the supply of personal protective equipment was under control in April 2020, it later turned out to be not true.
Lions Led by Donkeys
Cummings called the very fact of Johnson’s leadership “crackers.” He said that there were thousands of people who could do a better job governing the country than the PM and his opposition in 2019, Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn.
"It's completely crackers that someone like me should have been there, just the same as it's crackers that Boris Johnson was in there," he told the parliamentary committee.
Cummings found it "completely crazy" that he himself held a crucial position in Downing Street becasue he is "not smart".
The former adviser to Johnson, Cummings criticised the UK political system that only offered the public a choice between two people (Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson in the 2019 election), adding that it has gone "terribly wrong".
He likened the government system in Britain to one where "lions are led by donkeys".
Spiderman Meme
When questioned on who is responsible for monitoring the threats of other pandemics, Cummings suggested that “no one has an answer to your question."
He argued that the political system was flawed in terms of its grip on emergencies and this has been exposed through Covid. The Cabinet Secretary’s responsibility is “only nominal” as they would argue they are not a “pandemic expert".
The general problem of Whitehall is that it is a system where on one hand ministers are nominally responsible for matters but are not actually in charge of hiring or firing staff to deal with these matters.
He likened this setup to the “Spiderman meme”, an image where two characters are pointing at each other, assigning blame.
Dominic Cummings has entered the Spiderman pointing meme into the British parliamentary record. pic.twitter.com/GshkOgCoZP
— Richard Chambers (@newschambers) May 26, 2021
Cummings, appointed as a senior adviser to Johnson in July 2019, controversially left the government in November 2020, amid what some media outlets called a "clear-out of Brexiteers" from Downing Street.
