Today we heard more than seven hours of testimony from Dominic Cummings, much of it taking aim at Matt Hancock. Tomorrow it looks as though Hancock will give us several hours of his own take on the way the government – and Cummings – handled the pandemic. This evening, a spokesman for the minister said:
‘At all times throughout this pandemic the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and everyone in DHSC has worked incredibly hard in unprecedented circumstances to protect the NHS and save lives. We absolutely reject Mr Cummings’s 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 and social care sector to recover from this pandemic.’
I understand that Hancock will tomorrow respond in person to an urgent question that’s been tabled by Labour’s Jon Ashworth on the government’s handling of Covid. Often when ministers are under fire they like to send a junior colleague to soak up the political fire, but it would be extremely difficult for Hancock to do this, and he clearly plans to come out fighting against Cummings.
He will also be leading a Downing Street press conference on the government’s response to the pandemic. This might not amount to the same length of time that Cummings had before the committee, but it’s a sign that the health secretary is not going to take the allegations lying down, and that Downing Street doesn’t want to accept any premise of Cummings’s evidence. After all, if Boris Johnson gave the impression that he agreed with Cummings in blaming Hancock, that would open the Prime Minister up to the equally damaging suggestions made by his former aide, including that he is not a ‘fit and proper person’ to lead the country through the pandemic.
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