The department of health was a “smoking ruin” while trying to run key parts of the response to the Covid-19 outbreak, Dominic Cummings has said.
Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser told MPs on Wednesday that the vaccination programme had only succeeded because it was taken away from Matt Hancock’s department.
Citing the ministry’s attempts to procure protective equipment for NHS workers Mr Cummings said it had been a deliberate decision to split off the programme – which has been widely seen as successful.
Speaking at the Commons Science and Technology Committee on Wednesday, the former chief of staff said he and Patrick Vallance had argued the programme needed to be split off from DHSC.
“It is not coincidental that we had to take it out of the Department of Health. We had to have it authorised very directly by the Prime Minister,” he said.
“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.
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“We also had the EU proposal which looked like an absolute guaranteed programme to fail – a 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 added that there was a need for “a very, very hard look” at what went wrong and why.
The UK’s vaccination programme is ahead of most of Europe and one of the most advanced in the world in terms of the number of people to have been given a single dose.
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UK news in pictures
16 March 2021
A giant 60-metre wide sand portrait of 12-year-old Ansha from Ethiopia created by WaterAid on Whitby Beach in Yorkshire. The image of the young girl, who spends hours each day collecting dirty water from a river, was created to illustrate how climate change threatens water access for world’s poorest
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UK news in pictures
15 March 2021
Five kayaks, each reflecting the shape of a human bone, form Osteoclast (I do not know how I came to be on board this ship, this navel of my ark) (2021), a sculpture by Teresa Solar, positioned outside Exchange Flags, it’s one of the outdoor exhibits in the 11th edition of Liverpool Biennial which opens March 20, 2021, and features a series of outdoor sculpture, sonic and digital commissions by nine different artists. PA Photo. Picture date: Monday March 15, 2021. PA Photo. To align with government guidelines, the second ‘inside’ chapter will launch the full festival of exhibitions and events hosted by key venues throughout the city in late Spring
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14 March 2021
Protesters calling for greater public safety for women after the death of Sarah Everard, against the police handling of a gathering on Clapham Common in Sarah Everard’s honour and against a proposed law that would give police more powers to intervene on protests hold up their mobile phones with their torches illuminated in Parliament Square in central London
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UK news in pictures
13 March 2021
A well-wisher places flowers at a band-stand where a planned vigil in honour of murder victim Sarah Everard was cancelled after police outlawed it due to Covid-19 restrictions, on Clapham Common, south London
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UK news in pictures
12 March 2021
Angela Rayner, deputy leader of the Labour Party, and Jonathan Ashworth, Shadow Health Secretary, launch a poster in central London, criticising the government’s recommendation of a 1 percent NHS pay proposal, following the party’s campaign launch on Thursday for the local and mayoral elections in May
PA
UK news in pictures
11 March 2021
Waves crash over the harbour wall in Newhaven, southern England
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UK news in pictures
10 March 2021
Officers from the Metropolitan Police search woodland near to Great Chart Golf and Leisure in Ashford, Kent
PA
UK news in pictures
9 March 2021
A vertical mulcher machine is used to clear trees during the restoration of an ancient bog near Kielder Water in Northumberland. The ancient habitat, known as the Border Mires, is under threat from encroaching trees which are being removed as part of a 50 year old environmental project to protect the Border Mires in Northumberland
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8 March 2021
Students take Lateral Flow Tests for coronavirus at the Jewellery Quarter Academy in Birmingham in the West Midlands, as pupils in England return to school for the first time in two months as part of the first stage of lockdown easing
PA
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7 March 2021
Nurses and NHS workers from the campaign group NHS Workers Say No, and Unite’s Guys and St Thomas Hospital Union branch, hold a socially distanced protest outside Downing Street in London over the proposed 1% pay rise from the Government
PA
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6 March 2021
Rangers fans outside the stadium after the Scottish Premiership match at Ibrox Stadium, Glasgow
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5 March 2021
People go for a walk at The Dream a sculptor in Sutton Manor, St Helens, Merseyside, on a clear Spring day
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4 March 2021
Health Secretary Matt Hancock during a visit to the Centre for Virus Research at Glasgow University in Glasgow
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3 March 2021
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak outside 11 Downing Street, London, before heading to the House of Commons to deliver his Budget
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2 March 2021
A train rounds the coast and heads towards the Carbis Bay Estate hotel and beach, which is set to be the main venue for the upcoming G7 summit
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UK news in pictures
1 March 2021
Newborn lambs in a field at A J Thompson & Sons farm on the Romney Marsh near Lydd in Kent on the first day of meteorological spring
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UK news in pictures
28 February 2021
People walking on the beach in Scarborough, North Yorkshire
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UK news in pictures
27 February 2021
The coffin of Captain Tom Moore is being carried members of the Armed Forces at Bedford Crematorium in Bedford
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26 February 2021
A dog stands on rocks as the sun rises behind it at New Brighton beach, Wirral
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25 February 2021
Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds delivers a pre-Budget speech to the Institute of Global Prosperity at Labour Party headquarters in London
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24 February 2021
Britain’s Health Secretary Matt Hancock looks on outside Downing Street in London, Britain
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23 February 2021
Two surfers make their way into the sea off of Boscombe beach in Dorset
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22 February 2021
Crocuses bloom outside Trinity College in Cambridge
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21 February 2021
Street art adorns many of the streets and walls around the Digbeth area of Birmingham
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20 February 2021
Parts of Callander in Stirlingshire flooded after the River Teith burst its banks
PA
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19 February 2021
The sun rises over St Mary’s Lighthouse, Northumberland
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18 February 2021
Cars drive along the A1101 in Welney, Norfolk, which is passable again after two months submerged by floodwater
PA
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17 February 2021
Professor Green announces Tideway’s new 25km Super Sewer is ‘Heading East’, marking a major stage in the construction of the tunnel, as two giant Tunnel Boring Machines link up to break through into Bermondsey and commence tunnelling towards East London. Once completed, the sewer system will prevent millions of tonnes of raw sewage entering the Thames
PA
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16 February 2021
man holds up signs reading “I LOST MY JOB!!” and “BORIS, WHO IS GOING TO PAY THIS BILL? I DON’T HAVE ANY MONEY TO PAY MY CREDIT CARD” at the window of his hotel room at the Radisson Blu hotel in London
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UK news in pictures
15 February 2021
Passengers arriving at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 are escorted by security personal to buses. From today, people arriving from 33 “red list” countries, including South Africa and the United Arab Emirates, must isolate in hotels rooms for 10 days at their own expense. The policy was announced late last month in response to the emergence of new variants of the novel coronavirus that are more resistant to existing vaccines.
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UK news in pictures
14 February 2021
People play ice hockey on frozen flooded fields near Ely in Cambridgeshire
PA
UK news in pictures
13 February 2021
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, wearing a face mask, accompanied by Sarah Rose (left), MD of the Northumbria healthcare PPE manufacturing hub in Seaton Delaval
PA
UK news in pictures
12 February 2021
Lanterns hang across the street to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year which marks the Year of the Ox, in Chinatown, central London, during England’s third national lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus.
PA
UK news in pictures
11 February 2021
European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic at London’s St Pancras Station after arriving in the UK ahead of talks with Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove on the Northern Ireland protocol.
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10 February 2021
A frozen road sign and hedgerow are covered in icicles, as Storm Darcy affects large parts of the country, in Shenley, Hertfordshire
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UK news in pictures
9 Februrary 2021
People walk up Gardner street in Glasgow as snow blankets the city
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UK news in pictures
8 February 2021
Drifting snow covers a car in Harwood, County Durham
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7 February 2021
People walk through the snow in Knole Park in Sevenoaks
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UK news in pictures
6 February 2021
A boy sledges at Moulin Moor near Pitlochry, as storm Darcy approaches, in Scotland
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UK news in pictures
5 February 2021
Research centre assistant Layla Hillsden with a rare copy of the 1647 Beaumont and Fletcher folio, an anthology of plays by John Fletcher and William Beaumont, from the personal library of King Charles II that has recently been acquired by Special Collections at the University of Leeds
PA
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4 February 2021
Al Goodridge, from Newtonmore, uses an axe to create a channel in the ice for his wife Alice to swim in in Loch Insh, in the Cairngorms National Park
PA
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3 February 2021
A mural of Captain Sir Tom Moore, by artist Robert Newbiggin, adorns a wall in Southport. The WWII veteran raised nearly £33 million for NHS charities ahead of his 100th birthday last year by walking laps of his garden in Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire. He was admitted to Bedford Hospital this weekend after testing positive for Covid-19 and died yesterday with his family present
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UK news in pictures
2 February 2021
Police officers remove an environmental activist protesting against the HS2 high speed rail line, from the roof of the HS2 office in central London on February 2, 2021. – Designed to run to the former industrial powerhouse Birmingham and then Manchester and Leeds, HS2 was supposed to follow on from London’s southern Eurostar connection with Paris
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UK news in pictures
1 February 2021
Christine Barry lifts her son Oran, two, up to kiss a statue of St Brigid as they visit St Brigid’s holy well in Co Kildare to mark St Brigid’s Day which is seen by many in Ireland as the first day of Spring
PA
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31 January 2021
People walk a dog in Pugneys Country Park in Wakefield, West Yorkshire
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30 January 2021
Firefighters inspect the charred remains of a block at Napier Barracks after police have said a fire was started deliberately in Folkestone, England. Napier Barracks, part of the disused Somerset House Sir John Moore Army Barracks, has been used since last summer to house Asylum Seekers arriving from France to the South Coast. It has been reported that 120 of the 400 people being housed there have caught Coronavirus and a visiting doctor had described the living conditions as “inhumane”
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UK news in pictures
29 January 2021
Members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community take part in Friday prayers at the Baitus Subhan Mosque in Croydon, England. For nearly the past year, the Covid-19 pandemic, and its resulting limits on public gatherings, have forced religious communities to find new ways to observe prayers, with many events being marked at home. Mosques as well as other places of religious worship remain open, though numbers have been limited to help maintain social distancing
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UK news in pictures
28 January 2021
Artwork depicting animals, created by Raymond and Leonard is displayed in the window of a house in Acton, London, to launch The Great Big Art Exhibition, the nation’s largest ever exhibition, an initiative by Firstsite
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UK news in pictures
27 January 2021
Fishing boats, some abandoned, lie in the waters of the River Wyre at Fleetwood in Lancashire
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UK news in pictures
26 January 2021
A group of friends use a sheet to sledge in the snow-covered Lickey Hills Country Park, Birmingham
PA
Meanwhile PPE and other government procurement around the Covid crisis has been dogged with allegations of inefficiency, waste, and cronyism.
Mr Cummings quit the government in November as part of row over influence in No.10. He was called the committee on Wednesday to discuss his proposals for a British state-directed scientific agency.
Downing Street defended the response of the Department of Health and Social Care to the coronavirus pandemic after Cummings’ comments.
Speaking in Westminste ron Wednesday afternoon, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “Covid challenged health systems around the world. From the outset, it was always our focus to protect the NHS and save lives.
“I would point to what was achieved last year in terms of establishing one of the biggest diagnostic networks in UK history, in terms of increasing the number of tests we are able to undertake every day.
“We have procured over nine million items of PPE, we have established the NHS Test and Trace system which has contacted millions of people and asked them to isolate.
“DH (Department of Health) and the NHS were central to the rollout of the vaccination programme.”
