Dominic Cummings’s return will worry No. 10

Dominic Cummings has been giving evidence this morning to the Commons science committee. Ahead of his appearance, there was much speculation about what problems the session would bring up for his former boss, Boris Johnson. Since leaving government, there has been concern across government over what Johnson’s former righthand man might do or say – his relationship with Downing Street can hardly be described as cosy these days. By many he is regarded as a threat.

However, the aim of today’s session was to look at the government’s new research funding agency, ARIA, and the session that is likely to give No. 10 the biggest headache is yet to come. That will be when Cummings appears before the joint Health and Science Committee later this year to give evidence on the government’s Covid response.

The topic did still come up. Cummings said one of the biggest lessons of the pandemic and the government response is that ‘we should go to extreme lengths to de-bureaucratise the system’ and make sure the state can move quickly when required.
Discussing the need to cut through bureaucracy, the former senior No. 10 adviser pointed to the vaccine programme as an example of what can be achieved when this is done. 

Cummings told MPs that it was ‘not coincidental that the vaccine programme worked at it did’. Reflecting on that period last spring when the vaccine taskforce came together in the wake of the PPE debacle, he said that the Department for Health had ‘an absolute total disaster’ with procurement. This was the driving force for taking the vaccine process away from the department and establishing an independent taskforce with the powers to boot. 

Cummings said with the Department for Health a ‘smoking ruin’, the Chief Scientific Officer Patrick Vallance proposed the idea of an independent taskforce to Boris Johnson. Cummings also spoke of the decision by the UK government not to take part in the EU scheme – which drew criticism at the time. He said the EU proposal ‘looked like a guaranteed programme to fail’. As I’ve reported for the magazine previously, while Matt Hancock has spoken publicly about vaccines on multiple occasions, the figures who were key were wide-ranging and many of the key ministers were in the business department.

Reflecting on the government’s Covid response, Cummings said that more needed to be done on building UK infrastructure to ensure there was no repeat of ‘the disaster we saw last year’. He said that his final conversation with the Prime Minister before his departure from government last year was on the important role science can play for the government and country – urging the Prime Minister to bring science to the fore. 

In terms of skeletons in the closet on Covid, today’s session was more teaser than bombshell. However, it was clear from Cummings’s appearance that he is more than happy to discuss the decisions taken on Covid across government – along with a lot more. Cummings said there is a need for a ‘a very, very hard look’ at what went wrong. He ended the session by telling the committee he would be happy to return to answer ‘any questions’ on how No. 10 worked, why he left and all the crazy stories in the media ‘whenever you want me to’. Given the tensions in No. 10 over Cummings’s departure and the various briefings since, that’s an offer that will cause nerves in 10 Downing Street.