Thread by @paulwaugh

Cttee is told that the Sunday before he became PM, @BorisJohnson was in Cummings' living room asking if he could "come into Downing Street to try and help sort out the huge Brexit ...nightmare"

Cummings says his conditions for joining No.10 were:

- is PM 'deadly serious about actually getting Brexit done and avoiding second referendum'?.
- double the science budget
- support me and try to change how it all works given Whitehall is a 'disaster zone'

"I think there's a tendency to think of the science funding system like as people running the system, but that's not the reality. The reality is, the system runs the people."
#classicdom

Cummings: "Actually I brought over a brilliant young British neuroscientist who was working there [in a US research centre], and he now works in number 10 .And he made some critical contributions to how we, how the British government, dealt with COVID last year."

As she questions Cummings, Tory MP Katherine Fletcher doing her best to give the sketchwriters some easy pickings:
"How do you stop the tinfoil hat brigade pulling the wool over five people's eyes with a lot of money?"

Cummings says he won't work for new research agency
"I know that there are some rumours around about that sort of thing, rumours that No10 has asked me to do it or whatever but I don't know if there are thinking about that but if it was suggested I would certainly say no."

Cummings on his £45k pay rise. Says it followed 2019 exln: "I moved back onto the normal paygrade for my position" but stresses that was after a pay CUT when he first arrived.

Cummings says he was offered £140k when he started but refused it. "I figured that I should be paid the same for trying to sort out the Brexit mess as I've been paid for doing Vote Leave, so I asked for a pay cut." Says until Dec 2019 he was on lower pay than usual for his role