Why might a top medical adviser be dropped from the government’s daily coronavirus press briefing? This was the question that MPs were keen to answer after England’s chief nurse gave evidence to the public accounts committee on Monday. Ruth May, who was interrogated by the committee chair Meg Hillier, failed to appear at the daily Downing Street presser on 1 June – days after the Dominic Cummings lockdown controversy. Instead, Matt Hancock was joined by epidemiologist John Newton from Public Health England.
But those looking for a simple answer to the question of her sudden disappearance may be disappointed. She told the committee: ‘It is indeed true I was dropped from a briefing but that happens to many of my colleagues as well. That is a regular occurrence.’ When pushed on whether her views on Cummings led to her departure, Ms May issued a cryptic response:
We talk about lots of these preparations questions and of course I was asked about lockdown and rules to lockdown. I believe the rules were clear and they were there for everyone’s safety. They applied to us all.
Those wanting to present her comments as confirmation of the silencing of a critical voice would do well to note what she said slightly earlier in the hearing. The chief nurse explained that she had, in fact, been lined up to present another press conference on 12 June ‘but I got stuck in traffic for that one’.
Asked directly if she thought she was dropped because she was unwilling to defend Cummings, Ms May said:
I don’t know why I was dropped from the briefing, I’m afraid you’d have to ask other people… I don’t have a reason as to why I was stepped down but, as I’ve said before, people are stepped up and stepped down at short notice. I know my collegues have been stepped down too so it isn’t unusual to be stepped down.
In fact, not a single question was asked about the Cummings affair at the 1 June briefing, by which time much of the media storm had blown over… Oh the irony!
Comments