Thread by @PippaCrerar

Look who’s back...

Committee chair @GregClarkMP reveals that Dominic Cummings has agreed to give evidence on the Covid pandemic to the joint health/science committee inquiry... but not today.

Cummings reveals conditions he set out to Boris Johnson to join him in No 10 the w/e before he became PM:
1. get Brexit done/ no 2nd ref
2. double science budget
3. create Arpa-style body
4. change how "disaster" of Whitehall works
Johnson told him: "Deal"
Underlines his power

GC: Why were you - the second most powerful man in the country - not able to set up Arpa-style body?

DC: "We made some progress but we were swamped... by the Brexit problem.
"But then like everything else in govt, everything was swept away in the first wave of Covid."

"In my model you wouldn't have ministers anywhere near making decisions about how it spends money. I think that would be a disaster."

And you wonder why Tory MPs weren't the biggest fans of Cummings.

DC talking about science funding system here, but feels like this is his view on Whitehall too:

"The reality is the system runs the people. There's huge veto points everywhere so anybody can stop things happening but nobody can actually get things done."

Tory @K_Fletcher_MP asking the questions everybody wants the answers to: "How do you stop the tin foil hat brigade pulling the wool over the five people's[trustees] eyes with a lot of money?"

DC insists he won't be involved in new research body: "I wouldn't want to be involved. I shouldn't be involved. The only way I could add an value would be if you picked the wrong people in the first place."

Has No 10 asked him? "If it was suggested I would certainly say no."

"Media reports that I got a £40k payrise after Covid are wrong."

Claims he actually asked for a pay cut in summer 2019.

"I figured I should be paid the same for trying to sort out the Brexit mess as I was paid for Vote Leave".

After 2019 election went back to normal pay grade.

DC says one of "most obvious lessons of last year" is to "go to extreme lengths to de-bureaucratise the system".

Needs to be an emergency process so state can move quickly.

Needs pandemic infrastructure "so we don't have the disaster we saw last year".

Not sure @MattHancock will be very happy about this 👇

Cummings says Dept of Health had "an absolute total disaster" in terms of procurement last year.

"It's why we had to take the vaccines process out of the Dept of Health".

Cummings said EU vaccine procurement failures were clear from the off: "It looked like an absolute guaranteed programme to fail disaster".

DC unhappy about prospect of Rishi Sunak watering down the UK's science research budget.

"I didn't really watch the Budget and I don't have any idea what was in it... If UKRI budgets are being cut that is obviously an extremely bad decision".