Dominic Cummings Meeting with MPs About Handling of the Pandemic

Dominic Cummings is meeting with MPs to talk about the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. They will also quiz him over his own actions.

The PM’s former special adviser is expected to claim that Boris Johnson wanted to visit the Queen in person five days before the start of the first Covid lockdown. He will say he had to persuade Mr Johnson not to because of the risks. However, Downing Street deny this ever happened, and say the conversation between them last year on 18 March was by telephone.

Shortly afterwards, the Queen went to Windsor Castle, from Buckingham Palace, to protect her from catching the virus. At 93 years old, at the time, she was in the high risk category.

Mr Cummings, who left his role at Downing Street last autumn, is appearing in front of a joint parliamentary committee today. In recent weeks he has highly criticised the government and the way they handled the pandemic. He says “secrecy contributed greatly to the catastrophe”.

Ahead of facing the committee, Mr Cummings posted a photo on Twitter showing a whiteboard with sketches from a meeting. Alongside it he wrote, “first sketch of Plan B, PM study, Fri 13/3 eve – shown PM Sat 14/4”. He added that he would reveal further details later.

In a Tweet last week, Mr Cummings said the government’s pandemic plan was “part disaster, part non-existent”. He urged for more scrutiny of policy to make sure they deal with the Indian variant.

Questions for Dominic Cummings

Mr Cummings questioning is at 9:30 BST, and will last for about four hours. It is a joint session of Parliament’s health and social care and the science and technology select committees. It is expected that questions will cover a variety of issues. This will include decision making in the early months, and timings of lockdowns and other measures and restrictions. It will also cover queries about the government’s procurement processes for things such as PPE.

He will most probably also face questions regarding his own actions, particularly his controversial trip to Barnard Castle during the first national lockdown. At the time he claimed the reason for the long journey was to check his eyesight before driving back to London.

Due to his own scrupulous behaviour, and departure from Downing Street, it is unclear how reliable a witness Mr Cummings actually is. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps says he would “leave others to judge” this, as “most people will have come to their own conclusions a long time ago about [this] particular adviser”.

Decisions not made quick enough

Dominic Cummings was present in the room when decisions were made during the crisis. It is easy to look back with hindsight, but the pandemic was fast paced and unpredictable. The situation constantly changed every day, and it was a learning curve. However, these decisions were a matter of life and death, and Mr Cummings makes no secret now of his frustration at the speed of decisions when the virus first arrived in the UK. The government were not well prepared, and the original plan not enough.

When cases rose again towards the end of 2020, the government failed to act quickly, and dragged their heels on bringing back restrictions. This failure to tighten rules sooner led to a much bigger outbreak of the disease. Mr Cummings will suggest that the Prime Minister was at fault, and made a huge mistake. At this time the government should have had a better understanding of the virus. They should have been able to make educated predictions on what would happen, and how to prevent it.

However, Mr Cummings cannot fully separate himself from what went wrong, as his role as adviser had influence over the decisions.

The government maintain that throughout the pandemic their “priority is to save lives, protect the NHS and support people’s jobs and livelihoods”.

There is an independent public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic planned for Spring 2022.

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