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

On Carrie Symonds’ role in his decision to quit Downing Street, Cummings said: “My resignation was definitely connected to the fact that the prime minister’s girlfriend was trying to change a whole bunch of different appointments at No10 and appoint her friends to particular jobs.

“In particular, she was trying to overturn the outcome of an official process about hiring a particular job in a way which was not only completely unethical but also clearly illegal.

“I thought the whole process about how the prime minister was behaving at that point was appalling and all of that was definitely part of why I went.”

Cummings says the thing he got wrong and “terribly regrets” now, is not threatening to publicly resign to try and force the PM into action on a second lockdown.

“I ought to have said to him then, ‘I’m resigning in 48 hours, we can do this one way or the other way, if you announce that you’re going to have a lockdown and take serious action now I will leave, go quietly, we’re all friends. If you don’t I’ll call a press conference and say the prime minister’s making a terrible decision and its going to kill thousands of people’.

“I should have gambled on holding a gun to his head essentially. And who knows if that would have worked or not, but fundamentally it was all upside given that my role was basically done at that point.

“So I apologise for not trying that.”

Paul Bristow MP prompts another string of apologies from daytime news-readers as he quotes verbatim this message (below) in his questioning of Dominic Cummings.

Hancock “used Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty as shields for himself,” says Cummings.

“He used the whole ‘we’re following the science’ as a way so he could always say ‘well if things go wrong we can just blame the scientists and say its not my fault’.

“I saw him discuss that with the prime minister and I think it was one of the many appalling things that Hancock did.”

Cummings says that Dominic Raab has not received enough credit for how he handled the situation when the PM was ill.

He says there were conversations about how the PM would be replaced if he’d died, that’s how serious the situation was.

He also says Rishi Sunak performed well throughout the pandemic.

Cummings says Johnson was told he shouldn’t sack Hancock, because “he’s the person you fire when the inquiry comes along”.

He also claims he called for Hancock to be sacked every week, sometimes every day.

Cummings says he will look at publishing some of the evidence he has that Hancock has lied, though he says he is wary of publishing private messages.

“What I think should happen, I think far better than me randomly throwing Whatsapps out onto the internet, is that you the MPs should force the MPs... MPs have the power to force the government to face up to this reality.”

Committee Chair Greg Clark says it is a specific requirement that Cummings evidences the claim about Hancock lying.

“I don’t think really that Gove had a huge amount of responsibility in a sense for this.

“It’s not like Gove is in charge of government procurement.”

Sarah Owen MP pushes back on this, saying he is the minister responsible for the department responsible for procurement.

“I’m sure he would say that he has made some mistakes on this, but at the heart of this, we went into this with the wrong system.

Sarah Owen MP asks whether Cummings thinks he has done his job properly.

He says : “I think there’s no doubt whatsoever that there’s many thousands of people in this country who could have done my job much better than me. That’s unarguable.”

She follows by asking whether he thinks “Boris Johnson is a fit and proper person” to get us through the pandemic?

“No,” he says.