Dominic Cummings evidence live: Latest updates as former PM aide expected to land more blows on Government

Asked by Jeremy Hunt whether he stands by his account of the Barnard Castle trip. Hunt says many people took issue not with the decision to move his family out of London, but to drive 30 miles to Barnard Castle ostensibly to test his eye site.

“The truth is only a few days before then I had been sitting in bed writing a will, what to do if I die.

“I try to explain this all at the time, it seemed to me like, OK if you’re going to drive 300 miles to go back to work the next day then pottering down the road for 30 miles and back to see how you feel after you have come off what you thought might be your death bed didn’t seem crazy to me at the time.”

Hunt interjects to say, “did it not seem crazy to do that test with your wife and child in the car with you?”

Cummings says: “It didn’t seem crazy at the time.

Hunt: “Does it seem crazy now?

Cummings: “It didn’t seem crazy at the time, it seemed just like OK, let’s get in the car and drive up and down the road, if it feels bad come home and see how I feel as I get going. But I can completely understand why people think the whole thing was weird.

“Obviously I wish I’d never heard of Barnard Castle, I wish I’d never gone. I wish the whole nightmare had never happened.”

In a stark reminder of what all this is, at least should, be about, Cummings backs call for a Covid inquiry, without delay.

He says, “tens of thousands of people died who didn’t need to die”.

After a recess, the third and final session is now underway.

Cummings says he was pressing for a ‘circuit-breaker lockdown’ in September.

Boris Johnson ignored advice and acted on his own in putting off the lockdown, he says.

The economic arguments were outweighing everything else for the PM “at this point”, he said.

After the first lockdown, PMs was “cross” with Cummings and others about being “pushed into lockdown” and said that he “should have been the mayor from Jaws and kept the beaches open”.

“That’s what he said on many, many occasions, he didn’t think in July or September, ‘thank goodness we did the first lockdown it was obviously the right thing to do,’ his argument then was we shouldn’t have the done the first lockdown and he wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.”

Cummings says some of the reporting on the PM’s “let the bodies pile high” remark was incorrect, however, the BBC’s version which claimed he’d said rather see “bodies pile high” than implement a third lockdown, was correct.

“That was not in September though, that was immediately after he finally made the decision to do the lockdown on the 31 October.”

Cummings was prompted to give evidence today because, “people need to understand how the government failed them when they needed it” he says.

“People need to understand that now. Who knows what other kinds of problems might come along in the next few years that could easily have the exact same consequences.

“Critical as I am of the prime minister, in no way, shape or form can you say this is just his fault. If you just shuffle him or a couple of ministers around or Hancock it would suddenly work, it wouldn’t.

“These failings our programmed by the wiring of the system, and if you have something this bad and you’ve get tens and tens of thousands of people died who didn’t need to die, and massive economic destruction the way that we’ve had it, that didn’t need to happen, if we’d sorted things out earlier, everyone in this country needs to face the reality of this. “

He also says it is clear that the PM has changed his mind and is “desperate not to face up to this and not to learn the lessons, I think because of the disaster in the autumn”.

Cummings says he is not surprised at all by the delay in adding India to the red travel list.

“That is completely in the character of No10,” he said.

Cummings also says he is not surprised by the confusion around the ‘Green, Amber, Red’ travel list countries.

He also says he doesn’t know who is currently advising the PM.

Cummings says he “can’t really remember” conversations about the Eat Out To Help Out scheme, but that he didn’t raise any specific objections to the policy as he was opposed to the PM’s overall strategy.

Many figures have been heavily criticised by Cummings today, though Rishi Sunak, and even this policy which seems to fly in the face of what Cummings says he was arguing for at the time, remain completely unscathed so far.

“The Prime Minister knew I blamed him for the whole situation and I did.

“By October 31 our relations were essentially already finished, the fact that his girlfriend also wanted rid of me was relevant but not the heart of the problem.

“The heart of the problem was fundamentally I regarded him as unfit for the job and I was trying to create a structure around him to try and stop what I thought were extremely bad decisions and push other things through against his wishes.

“He had the view that he was Prime Minister and I should just be doing what he wanted me to.”