The health department was a “smoking ruin” in the early days of the COVID pandemic, the prime minister’s former chief aide has told MPs.
Dominic Cummings revealed how the UK’s vaccine programme was moved out of Matt Hancock‘s Department of Health and Social Care following the problems health officials had in buying protective equipment for NHS staff.
He made the comments in explosive evidence to the House of Commons’ science and technology committee, in his first public remarks since leaving Number 10 last year.
Mr Cummings also claimed:
• The government’s procurement system before 2020 was an “expensive disaster zone” and when the COVID pandemic hit it “completely fell over”
• Parliament should hold an “urgent” inquiry into the coronavirus crisis and MPs should take a “very, very hard look” into “what went wrong and why in 2020”
• He made four demands of Prime Minister Boris Johnson prior to joining his Number 10 staff, including sorting out the “disaster zone” of Whitehall
• He did not ask for a pay rise from the prime minister before leaving Downing Street and had previously taken a pay cut
• He did not watch this month’s budget, adding: “I don’t really have any idea what was in it”
Commenting on the UK’s vaccination programme, Mr Cummings told MPs that Number 10 “took it out of the Department of Health” when they decided to create a separate taskforce.
“It’s not coincidental the vaccine programme worked the way that it did,” he said.
“It’s not coincidental that to do that we had to take it out of the Department of Health, we had to have it authorised very directly by the prime minister and say ‘strip away all the normal nonsense that we can see is holding back funding in therapeutics’.”
Mr Cummings added: “In spring 2020 you had a situation where the Department of Health was just a smoking ruin in terms of procurement and PPE and all of that.
“You had serious problems with the funding bureaucracy for therapeutics, that was the kind of context for it.
“Patrick Vallance (the government’s chief scientific adviser) then came to Number 10 and says ‘this shouldn’t be run out of the Department for Health, we should create a separate taskforce’.
“We also had the EU proposal which looked like an absolute guaranteed programme to fail debacle.
“Therefore Patrick Vallance, the cabinet secretary, me, and some others said ‘obviously we should take this out of the Department of Health, obviously we should create a separate taskforce and obviously we have to empower that taskforce directly with the authority of the prime minister’.”
Mr Cummings, who masterminded the Vote Leave campaign during the EU referendum, told the committee that the “one of the most obvious lessons” of the COVID crisis was the government should “go to extreme lengths to try to de-bureaucratise the normal system”.
“In February, March, April last year there was no entity in the British – zero entities, including the prime minister himself – who could make rapid decisions on science funding minus horrific EU procurement, state aid etc, etc laws,” he said.
“No entity in the British state that could operate at scale and at pace and that was obviously disastrous.”
Mr Cummings was also quizzed about the government’s plans for a new “high-risk, high-reward” scientific agency he had spearheaded while in Downing Street.
The £800m Advanced Research & Invention Agency (ARIA) is modelled on America’s long-running Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).
Answering questions on how he got Mr Johnson to agree to ARIA’s creation, Mr Cummings told the committee: “Essentially what happened was the prime minister came to speak to me the Sunday before he became prime minister and said ‘would I come into Downing Street to try and help sort out the huge Brexit nightmare’.
“I said ‘yes, if – first of all – you’re deadly serious about actually getting Brexit done and avoiding a second referendum’.
“‘Second, double the science budget, third, create some ARPA-like entity and, fourth, support me in trying to change how Whitehall works and the Cabinet Office work because it’s a disaster zone’.
“And he said ‘deal’.”
Mr Cummings added the July 2019 meeting between himself and Mr Johnson was attended by only the two of them, and took place in his living room.
After he left Downing Street in November last year amid a bitter power struggle between Number 10 staff, it was revealed he had received a pay rise of at least £40,000 while working for the prime minister.
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