Dom Cummings is back, testifying before the Science Committee to put a marker down on his science agency project ARIA. First barrage for No10, says he's "not confident about how it will work out”, as too many restrictions already being imposed on it.
Cummings also fires a warning shot for Rishi Sunak, by revealing ARIA is already “pencilled in to get generous spending increases year on year in the Spending Review”, expected in the Autumn. ie, cut that if you dare.
A big rocket for Matt Hancock now. Cummings says "the Department of Health had a total disaster in how it buys, how it procures" during its immediate response to covid last year. Also says DHSC was stripped of the vaccine procurement task for that reason.
Ouch. Cummings says the vaccine programme would not have been anywhere near as successful if it was left within "the smoking ruin" of DHSC. "Patrick Vallance, the Cabinet Secretary and me said we should create a separate Taskforce.. strip away all the normal nonsense".
Now Rishi Sunak gets a bit more of it. Cummings identifies him personally as the original author of the 0.7% aid target cut. "It was a strong argument that the Chancellor made for temporarily reducing the ODA budget".
And finally: a cliffhanger. Cummings: "I’m very happy to come back and answer any and all questions about how No10 works, why I left. All the crazy stories that have been in the media, I’m happy to clarify those”. I bet he is.
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