Cummings: Matt Hancock should have been sacked for ‘criminal, disgraceful behaviour’
Dominic Cummings has claimed Matt Hancock should have been sacked for “criminal, disgraceful behaviour” in reference to failures in setting up England’s test and trace system.
The former Number 10 aide said former cabinet secretary Sir Mark Sedwill agreed with him and that Boris Johnson “came close to removing” Hancock in April 2020.
The Prime Minister’s spokesman said this afternoon that Johnson has “full confidence” in the health secretary.
Cummings told a joint session of Westminster’s health and science committees that Hancock diverted resources when setting up the country’s testing regime to meet his 100,000 tests a day target.
He also said the government took so long to set up a testing regime, because at first the plan was for the UK to get herd immunity and not to lockdown.
It finally became policy to set up mass testing in April 2020, with Hancock promising 100,000 tests a day by the end of that month.
Cummings claims “I said repeatedly from February to March, if we don’t fire the secretary of state and if we don’t get the testing into someone else’s hands we’re goin to kill people and it’s going to be a catastrophe”.
“You had half the government including me in Number 10 ringing around frantically saying ‘do not do what Hancock says – build the thing properly for the medium-term’,” Cummings said.
“You had Hancock calling them all saying down tools on this, do this, hold tests back so I can hit my target. In my opinion he should have been fired for that thing alone.
“That meant the whole of April was hugely disrupted by different parts of Whitehall fundmetally trying to operate in different ways. Completely because Hancock wanted to go on TV and say look at my 100k target. It was criminal, disgraceful behaviour that caused serious harm.”
Johnson’s former top aide also accused Hancock of repeatedly lying about the UK’s supplies of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), about testing in care homes and on NHS treatment of non-Covid patients.
Cummings said that people going from hospitals to care homes were not tested for Covid and that there was no “protective ring” around the elderly as the government continually said.
These factors led to a surge in care home deaths last April.
Cummings said: “The cabinet secretary said to the Prime Minister in almost the first meeting when he came back – ‘Prime Minister the British system is not set up to deal with a secretary of state who repeatedly lies in meetings – we can’t operate like that’.
“We couldn’t get to grips with test and trace until we got it out of [the Department of Health] into different agencies.”
A spokesperson for Hancock said: “We absolutely reject Mr. Cummings’ claims about the health secretary.
“The health secretary will continue to work closely with the Prime Minister to deliver the vaccine rollout, tackle the risks posed by variants and support the NHS.”
NHS Test and Trace was widely considered a failure as it failed to prevent a second and third lockdown in October last year and January this year.
One of the key problems was getting people to actually isolate when they were told to by the app.
Cummings said there were two key reasons for non-compliance and for the failure of Test and Trace.
“One of the fundamental reasons people were not isolating is we the government failed to explain to people that a lot of people are being infected asymptomatically,” he said.
“It’s airborne, and even now, even today the government communications is overstressing wash your hands and under stressing airborne.
“We also didn’t provide the incentive properly….I had meetings where I got people to print out the the docs from Singapore and other places that said here’s the system. There’s a combination of stick and carrot.
“It’s much stricter on legal things, but we will also provide food to your door, pay you so you’re not financially disadvantaged.”