Thread by @tomhfh

"Senior officials and advisers such as me fell disastrously short."

Cummings personally apologises for any part he played in Govt failure at start of the pandemic.

"In retrospect it is completely obvious that many many institutions failed."

Praises Taiwan's swift action in January. Highlights the West's failure to "see the smoke".

By late Jan, Cummings raised Covid concerns but apologises for not following up and pushing as much as he could.

Govt claims of brilliant preparations stopped further prioritisation (Global Health Security Index ranked the UK as best in world for pandemic preparedness in 2019).

Cummings says 'war footing' did not come about until late February.

Takes less than subtle swipe at PM for going on holiday for two weeks mid Feb.

In Feb, Cummings sent representatives COBRA meetings - Ben Warner and Imran Shafi.

Did not advise PM to go to those meetings.

Says COBRA meetings leaked like a sieve.

Cummings was briefed 1 on 1 by Vallance and Whitty.

In Feb Cummings says Boris initially insistent Covid was "new swine flu".

Hints Boris spoke about wanting to be injected with Covid on TV to prove it's fine.

Says a view of No10 officials was if PM chaired COBRA meetings it could have been counterproductive.

On *that* blog - "not a single letter of what I wrote in 2019 was changed".

Quoted a chunk of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article he was commenting upon.

What happened is he included more in the *quote*, not what he wrote in his analysis.

Cummings: "essentially there is a semantic problem, do we want herd immunity or is that just part of the plan... of course nobody wanted this to happen."

The official plan *involved* herd immunity.

By early March Cummings was reluctant to ditch the official plan. Later he did urge it, yet stresses weighty significance of questioning official scientific advice and its flawed logic.

By night of 11th March, Cummings told PM and others that UK 'delay' plan was far more risky than going sooner.

Warned of risk of delaying action in a whatsapp message.

"I wanted to announce on the 12th individual stay at home and household quarantine as well."

The govt did not announce stay at home until 23 March 2020.

"By the 11th/12th we had already gone terribly wrong."

References this SAGE graph, saying it kept appearing 15th 16th 17th March.

"Completely wrong" thinking in SAGE and Health Dept was that UK public would never accept east asian style restrictions.

Cummings says he pointed to Lombardy at the time saying people are terrified and would stay at home. Officials disagreed.

12/3
Cummings to PM "We've got big problems today... some around the system want to delay bc they don't have the systems in place"

COBRA was to talk Covid BUT distractions:
NatSec going off about Trump bombing middle east.
PM's GF demanding press office deal with Times dog story

"This has essentially Plan B sketched on it"
20:08 on Friday 13 March.

"We said to the PM on 14th we will have to lock down, get there as soo as possible."

BUT there was no plan to, one had to be hacked together.

https://twitter.com/Dominic2306/status/1397452170249842691

"This was like a scene from Independence Day, saying the aliens are here, the plan is broken, we need a new plan."

"The NHS is going to be smashed in weeks and we've got days to fix it."

"I was incredibly frightened about the consequences of pulling the emergency string and scrapping the emergency plan... what if I'm wrong... what if everything gets worse in the winter with hundreds of thousands of deaths"

"I personally bitterly regret" string not pulled sooner.

Dept of Health advice, repeated through No10 was essentially chicken pox parties.

Took Cummings and Ben Warner to explain that there was no comparison - chicken pox does not spread exponentially or kill hundreds of thousands of people.

"It's obvious in retrospect that I left this far far too late... I should have done this in January is the reality of this."

"You read about this in history books. It was a classic example of groupthink."

"It was part of my job to challenge things. While I did do it on other things I did not do it early enough here."

Says could have and should have developed Plan B six weeks earlier.

Everyone was thinking peak would not be until June, thought they had weeks to prepare. Govt did not understand how fast it was spreading.

A week after locking down official graphs were *still* saying would not peak until June, despite hospitalisation data disproving that!

Brilliant people at relatively junior and middling levels were let down by leadership.

Cummings says Hancock should have been fired.

Cab Sec and Cummings "said repeatedly to the Prime Minister that [Hancock] should be fired."

The entire furlough scheme had to be constructed in days.

Even by 19th March shielding plan did not exist. Had to be put together in two all nighters.

No plan for financial incentives either.

Health Dept turned down ventilators because the price had gone up.

System did not even initially contemplate flying PPE over instead of *shipping* it: months vs hours.

"Department was completely and utterly overwhelmed."

Cummings says Hancock lied:

- Over people not getting treatment they deserved
- Over blaming Chancellor and Simon Stevens for mid April PPE shortage. Cab Sec said he lost confidence in Health Sec after then.

Cummings: news reports Rishi was trying to delay things were "completely wrong".

If you try to optimise for short term economy, you get worse health *and* economic outcomes, Cummings says.
Having no NHS to treat broken legs, cancer etc (as its swamped with Covid patients) would shatter confidence and people would lock themselves down anyway, killing economy.

Cummings: The Chancellor completely supported what me and Ben Warner and Patrick Vallance were saying about Plan B from 14 March.

"Any system that ends up with a choice between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson to lead the country has gone terribly terribly wrong."

"It's completely crazy that I should have been in such a senior position."

"The system weeds great people out from senior management jobs."

"What is it about Whitehall that promotes people who are so completely out of their depths."

Between lines, look what happened when Cummings tried to hire very smart "misfits and weirdos". Weeded out despite their ability.

"In January I essentially stopped talking to almost all journalists almost all of the time. This drove the media mad."

"The main person I spoke to in the whole of 2020 was Laura Kuenssberg at the BBC because the BBC has a special role at a time of national crisis."

Cummings did not speak to PM about media much because "the Prime Minister was already too obsessed with the media in a way that prevented him doing his own job."

Had COBRA logic and conclusions been published, outside experts could have analysed and pointed out mistakes says Cummings.

Cummings does not commit to publishing *all* texts with journalists. Says he will look through and provide anything that is significant to how decisions were made or mistakes were made.

Cummings: There ought to be a thorough review of all plans on the risk register. By default these should be open and public for scrutiny and revision. I'm absolutely sure if you opened up this process it could be improved.

Number 10 declined to let Cummings look through his official govt diary and emails prior to his committee appearance.

References this spiderman meme to describe accountability/leadserhip within civ serv.

It's like that but with everyone. All the different spidermans are pointing at each other saying you're responsible. And they're all kind of right.

COBRA room environment was terrible for pandemic response - its security, no internet etc meant no data could be brought in and analysed.

Had to move to Cabinet Room to look at data and make decisions.

Cummings accuses Sturgeon of sabotaging COBRA meetings, because she would pop up on TV as soon as concluded and spill beans.

Says many became Potemkin meetings where nothing happened to avoid this.

No 10 Covid data system was initially a whiteboard and Dom's iPhone calculator hitting x2 x2 x2.

In around six weeks relatively junior officials had to build a world class data system from scratch.

Cummings on SAGE graphs: "We thought we were here [blue] when actually we were here [red]"

(Colours and arrows added by me)

"Obviously we should have had household isolation in February...

We should have had the Taiwan system. We should have closed the borders. We should have ramped up testing. We should have has enforced household case quarantine."

Cummings softens the blow: "Obviously I have been critical of the Prime Minister... but if you dropped the most competent people in the world into that job in March you would have had similar outcomes... it was a system failure."

"If you could imagine that Parliament [17-19], God only knows what would have happened...

If that broken Parliament had limped on into 2020 the whole system would have broken down."

Cummings: no doubt that in SAGE & the Health Dept and the Cab Off there is a groupthink problem.

Until strategy change discussions on on 12/13th March, no one in Govt thought it was possible.

By 18th SAGE was still arguing with itself that lockdown impossible/counterproductive.

Cummings: It's true that I hit the panic button and tried to create an official plan.

It's also true that I worried my hitting panic button may have risked second peak / killing 100s of thousands.

Took outside experts to see wood for trees and give confidence to hit button.

Civil servant Helen MacNamara helped on that evening of 13th to give confidence to Dom to tell PM something had gone very wrong and change needed.

More than two and a half hours after it began, the first half of this session is now wrapping up.

Second half in 15 minutes.

Cummings wanted to fix test and trace in the South Korean way - not just impotently phoning people up but GPS/phone tracking to ensure isolation. Troubles with this approach included against GDPR and ECHR.

Cummings says fundamentally correct that it took too long to set up test & trace, was disrupted by Hancock 100k tests pledge, & probably true there were too many cases to track.

Says should have happened far earlier, and infringement on civil liberties lesser evil than lockdown.

"We couldn't deal with test and trace until we got it out of Department of Health's hands"

Cummings more savage on Hancock today than anyone. Says he wanted Hancock fired very early on and that was one of his best calls.

"We the government failed terribly to explain to people that

1. a lot of people are being infected asymptomatically
2. it's airborne

Even now, even today the govt is over-stressing wash your hands and under-stressing *it's airborne*."

Goes on to say self isolation needs to be stick and carrot - threat of prison plus food delivered to door.

"If we had just cut and pasted when they were doing in Singapore or Taiwan and said that's our policy things would have been better. No doubt about that at all."

Joint biosecurity centre came about as "everyone including the CMO and the CSA came to me and said PHE can't do this."

On why Hancock is still Secretary os State, Cummings says Boris "came close to removing him in April but fundamentally just wouldn't do it."

"Everyone around No10" wanted him gone but PM did not remove. Reasons why "would be speculation on my part."

Cummings wanted out of Number 10, told Boris in July "because this whole building is chaos. This whole system is chaos. And you are too afraid to give me the power to stop the chaos."

"We had companies banging on our door in Number 10 saying we can't get anyone in the Health Department to pick up the phone."

Cummings on procurement horrors.

System was blocking mass testing in spring/early summer. Money/manpower not made available for lateral flow / LAMP stuff. Could have been game changer to avoid further lockdowns while wait for vaccines. Time was wasted, not built in time for colder weather.

Cummings: Hancock told PM in March that people would be tested before going back into care homes.

This did not happen. People with Covid were sent into care homes.

On border closures 👇
Before April: Official repeated advice was not to close borders. "Another groupthink thing said it was basically racist to close the borders." That was the official advice, the official advice was closing the borders would have no effect.

After April: Basically the PM did not want them.

Cummings wanted wholesale import of Singapore rules, but by Summer Boris was back to thinking lockdown was mistake, wanted to be Mayor of Jaws.

Blames Boris, Tory MPs, and Daily Telegraph "stupid campaign" on overseas holidays.

Cummings: Not fair to blame PM before March. Wrong and unfair to say he prioritised the economy before this point. After April he did switch to prioritising economy.

"Huge parts of the public health administrations in Britain and America were captured by memes that turned out to be ludicrous."

On borders. On masks. The experts had it totally wrong.

"It's unarguable that we should have shut the borders in January."

Cummings: by Summer govt view became "we're past it now, Covid is history" - hence joke holiday policy.

Cummings: "We were told that people would be tested before being sent back to care homes, and that there was a plan for shielding"

These two things turned out to be completely untrue.

Some officials said there's nothing we can do, we haven't built the tools in advance. Lots of shrugging when asked about helpline for shielding.

Basically down to two people - Jen Allen and Oliver Lewis doing all nighters to sort food delivery to shielders. Without them failure.

Cummings says Sunday Times invented meetings on 12 March that never happened. Invented story about Cummings view on herd immunity. Included fake quote. Created terrible false impression that we didn't care about people. It wasn't true.

Cummings: Patients sent back to care homes were removed to make way for covid patients. Health Department assurances re: testing were not met. Care home residents had no testing, no PPE for staff, disaster.

Cummings: Crisis environment in week of 16th March meant people felt there was no choice. Why on earth Hancock told us everyone would be tested I do not know.

Cummings: One of the great myths about the whole thing is the reason for these problems was bad comms. Fundamentally the problem was bad policy, bad systems.

Comms disaster zone if PM phones up media and contradicts his own policy, or changes policy multiple times.

"It's easy to blame communications for bad policy and bad decision making"

Cites comms people telling Boris to not pick fight with Marcus Rashford. Says Boris initially disagreed then U-turned.

"On pretty much every single little thing [about communications] the PM and I disagreed" says Cummings, so he focussed on other things.

On misfits weirdos recruitment blog: "that did actually help... we did build that team."

REAL STORY OF TRIP

Autumn 19 had to move out of house due to security threats.

Episode happened with gang of people outside threatening to break in kill family.

22nd March fake quote story led to further problems.

Kept move to Durham quiet to avoid similar problems in Durham.

Stonewalled media because much was wrong and security issues.

PM said stonewalling would not work.

Terrible mistake made once stonewall end. Did not want to say security issues, did not want to move back out of Ldn, did not want more mobs. Misjudged. Whole thing was disaster.

Says did not lie in Barnard Castle Rose Garden presser, but left out that crucial security information to try to protect family.

"It would have been much better to tell the truth about the whole thing and come clean at the time."

"If we had defaulted to openness on this it might have been harder for my family but it would have been easier for the country and we should have done that."

Cummings: If it had been up to me I would have left my wife and child in Durham, was very weak, medical advice was I should rest but needed to be back at work. Wife was worried about me so came with. If I could have done I would have left them in Durham.

"I felt I couldn't tell the whole story about it... For the reasons I've described I felt my behaviour in leaving London at the time was perfectly reasonable. The truth at the time was I wasn't sorry about moving family out of London, I thought it was the right thing."

Cummings reveals that twice further he had to move family out of the house *in discussion with police* for safety reasons in spite of Covid rules.

He himself did not leave London again.

Cameras now on street, family moved out again for this committee appearance.

'Once the PM was not okay to hold the line, I should have said family out again and I'll explain the whole thing. This was a lesson in how not to manage something like this.'

Cummings: "The media realised there was this tension, that I was trying to massively diminish their influence, and so they wanted rid of me."

Cab Sec dissuaded Cummings from resigning in the Summer.

"In retrospect I was right to not resign in March, wrong to not go in September."

Cummings lists things that would have happened if he had the power the media said he did post-election:

- Serious border policy
- Masks compulsory
- Hancock fired

"Fundamentally Boris and I did not agree on Covid after March." Says was on losing side of argument after argument.

Cummings describes toxic No10 atmosphere, where PM fundamentally disagreed with him on Covid and Carrie Symonds was "desperate to get rid of me and my team".

Describes Boris as "like a shopping trolley slamming from one side of the aisle to the other."

Says Boris changed his mind on country quarantine policy every time the Telegraph wrote an editorial.

Cummings stands by eyesight drive:

"If I was going to make up a story I'd make up a hell of a lot better one than that."

Says days before he was writing a will. Said didn't seem crazy to do a short 13 mile drive to see how it goes before the big drive to London.

"I can completely understand why people think the whole thing was weird... I wish the whole nightmare had never happened... I can only apologise for the whole debacle."

What went right on vaccines?

- Clear responsibility, someone in charge
- Kate Bingham had strength of character to not be pushed around, and clear hierarchy
- Reported directly to PM not Health Department
- Told to treat like wartime thing, ignore normal rules, bulldoze lawyers

"The fact that it worked out relatively well compared to the rest of the world should not blind us to the fact that... we could have done this faster than we did."

Conventional wisdom was 'no vaccines in 2020'. Cummings spoke to "Bill Gates type people" who totally disagreed.

Cummings: Expected return on vaccine success is so high that even if billions wasted on preparing for loads of vaccines in parallel the gamble would be worth it.

Cummings: When we looked at the EU plan, not just me but also everyone who understands it said this was typical EU approach. Bogged down in bureaucracy, not doing things in parallel, leading to failure.

Vaccines were one of the few things we did right.

Surprising: says Boris was sceptical of herd immunity death toll like him 👇

On SAGE's Herd Immunity strategy, "the PM like me started to think this sounds at best extremely frightening"

Cummings says it's bonkers Govt denies 'herd immunity by September' strategy.

On all the official documents, TV etc as Herd Immunity plan. 12th March Cab Sec described it as "Chicken Pox Party Thing".

Cummings calls on MPs to seise legislative agenda and force inquiry sooner. Says the later it happens the more memories will fade or be rewritten and documents will be lost.

Cummings: Procurement system completely unfit for its purpose

In January one of biggest issues I was dealing with - ironically when I should have been paying more attention to Covid - was fixing procurement system.

Needs to be proper legal emergency fast track process.

Cummings on the benefits of vaccine intellectual property:

"I strongly strongly suspect Bill Gates knows a lot more about this than President Biden."

"Patrick Vallance deserves absolutely massive enormous credit for his role in the vaccine task force."

Cummings turns to promoting Human Challenge Trials - stresses it's not his idea.

"Companies created vaccines in literally hours. Govts should have paid 5k-10k people to be injected with Covid, some get vaccine some don't. If people died families could have been given millions."

Human Challenge Trials could have delivered us vaccines far earlier and saved an enormous number of lives

Here's a great explainer from @Sam_Dumitriu: samdumitriu.substack.com/p/on-human-cha…

Senior people in government have expressed concern to Cummings over lack of concern for variants. Normal entropy process of Whitehall and personnel changes are undermining good things.

Cummings blames Whitehall for briefing against people like Kate Bingham - says organs of the state hate successful people from outside coming in, lending their expertise, and getting things done.

Says Number 10's best guess for the briefing against Bingham was coming from parts of Whitehall who had their noses put out of joint.

Cummings says until the December '19 election things were totally dominated by the constitutional crisis, reform could not get properly underway.

Reform process started from the beginning of January.

Cummings says "the problem was from the first week of January we only had about six weeks to get things going before Covid began to dominate."

Cummings describes the crazy system of diffused responsibility in Civil Service. Ministers can literally only here/fire their two or three spads. Can't control their own workforce. Nothing in real life works like this.

Says a reason the Vaccine Task Force worked so well is it smashed through the spider-man meme, Bingham was in charge of hiring firing everything. Bypassed ordinary civil service.

Cummings: Civil Contingencies Act totally unfit for its job.

Emergency Coronavirus Bill was needed as a stop-gap.

Says upgrading Civil Contingencies Act is necessary, one of the reasons Inquiry needed.

Session adjourned for 23 minutes. Back at 1505.

Aaand we're back.

Autumn analysis now. Cummings says most significant is mid-September. SAGE and Vallance advised rapid action to do some kind of short sharp burst.

"We went round the houses on that decision and ended up doing it on 31 October."

In week of 15th Sept, Vallance and Whitty went to No10 saying we need to consider two week or longer lockdown.

R>1 was expected if schools returned in Sept.

"Many of us had told the PM in the summer do not tell people go back to work. Do not say covid is over." He disagreed.

Cummings said "Lesson of first wave was earlier the better when dealing with exponentials like this."

Boris was not inclined to do anything.

Cummings said "before you make a final decision... I want to have another meeting on Monday where we imagine the meeting is end of Oct"

Wanted to run 'simulation meeting' with best guesses on where data would be, so can make decision - if you would do it in Oct better to go now.

Meeting was held, but "unfortunately PM was listening to people who said we had already reached herd immunity."

Patrick Heneghan & Sunetra Gupta gave "don't lock down" view, saying HIT had been reached.

PM was told if you would LD in Oct do it now. He was not convinced.

Cummings told PM the whole lesson of what happened before was that by going later the lockdown lasts longer, is harsher, costs more, and more people die.

PM decided no.

Cummings said Cabinet was not involved or asked in this decision at all.

"I've been very critical of Hancock but Matt Hancock agreed with me on this one."

Big praise for Rishi

"Whenever the PM made a decision, the Chancellor extremely competently and extremely effectively rode in with an economic package and made it happen."

Cummings: "PM was cross with me and others for pushing him into the first lockdown."

The PM took the view that economic harm caused by lockdown would be worse than covid. Was not persuaded rampant Covid would also deliver economic disaster.

Cummings on Bodies Pile High comments: Version in Sunday Times not accurate, version in BBC is accurate.

Says he heard it and it was after 31 Oct lockdown.

*Carl Heneghan obvs, apologies

On learning lessons:

Was not surprised by delay on India on red list, totally in character with Number 10.

Describes Red Amber Green travel nonsense as "deja vu all over again."

Cummings says he does not recall how he felt about Eat Out to Help Out. Says it was not a hugely important part of strategy.

Interesting how Cummings seems to be a big fan of Rishi throughout this hearing. Dancing around an answer on whether or not he specifically opposed EOTHO.

Advised against students going back to university in September.

Advised against people going back to work in September.

Can't remember whether or not he gave a view on EOTHO.

Stresses how difficult it was to get mass testing going, despite support from all key players.

"My resignation was definitely connected to the fact that the PM's girlfriend was trying to change a whole bunch of different appointments in No10 and appoint her friends to particular jobs."

"In particular she was trying to overturn the outcome of an official process about hiring a particular job in a way that was not only completely unethical but was also clearly illegal."

"I thought the whole process about how the PM was behaving at that point was appalling and that was all part of why I went... however it was clear in July our relations were very far from where they had been... By 31 Oct our relations were pretty much finished."

"Fundamentally I regarded him as unfit for the job and I was trying to create a structure around him to try and stop what I thought were extremely bad decisions and push other things through against his wishes."

"He had the view he was PM and I should be doing as he wishes ad that was obviously not sustainable.

Only stayed because I was desperate to try and push through action to try to stop as many people dying as I could do.

After 2nd lockdown it was obvious I would be gone in days."

DC: what I ought to have done was say I'm resigning in 48 hours. I'll go quietly if you announce lockdown, if you don't I'll resign and hold press conf saying PM making terrible decision that will kill thousands.

Says "it's obvious now I should have gambled and done that."

Cummings accuses Hancock of using Whitty and Vallance as shields for himself. Asserts "that was one of many appalling things he did."

Praises Raab again. "No one had faced what Raab faced since Churchill in WW2" Joins Sunak and a number of No10 staff as those who come out of this with effusive praise.

Hancock, PM, most of the Civil Service getting both barrels, however.

Cummings says in principle regional tiering system made sense - points to targeted action successfully deployed in Korea.

"If you have an outbreak in Cornwall we didn't want to be shutting down the north of Scotland"

Cummings on Tiering failures: What should have happened is (well, post letting it get out of control) smashed it with a September lockdown then a very targeted Korea type approach, not whole regions.

Says Treasury not to blame for financial support bodges in tiered areas had to deal with No10 policy on tiering constantly shifting. Says treasury has to play catch up to chaos. Again Rishi escapes criticism.

Cummings: "MPs have the power to force the government to face reality."

"People like the former Cabinet Sec and others should be here like me under oath saying what they think we got right and what we got wrong."

Almost seven hours in, first mention of Gove - who gets off lightly re: procurement. Cummings says system broken, everyone had to bodge.

Cummings: One of the key architects of Plan B was Rishi's chief economic adviser Mike Webb. Dismisses speculation that Rishi was significantly lockdown sceptic.

Cummings denies he wants to move back to govt:
"I think everyone from my wife to Whitehall will agree the less everyone hears from me in the future the better."

Do you think Boris Johnson is a fit and proper person to get us through this pandemic?

"No."

Cumming emphasises how important it is to *listen to the people who have been right*.

They pointed out variant concerns to him in September, long before Kent and India.

Cummings, for the 974th time explains to MPs what exponential curves are.

If you're to lock down at all, locking down earlier is better.

What are key lessons?

- General principle of making things like SAGE more open
- Fundamental q of responsibility and who's in charge
- Whitehall diffused power is intrinsically hostile to high performance management
- Competition for 99% of CivServ jobs should be open by default

- Other thing: really thinking hard in terms of incentives. People are not incentivised for honesty, they're incentivised to keep heads down and back up system when it fails. People who Get Things Done not respected in the system.

Dom says "there are many thousands of people who could have done my job better than me. That's unarguable."

Cummings with another corker of a quote:
"Not attending some of the Covid meetings chaired by Hancock is not a sign you're not taking something seriously."

Lesson: "When you have these kind of groupthink episodes, by definition they happen as certain ideas take hold and people who understand why those things are wrong are excluded from the process.

The people who alerted me to this were not people inside the system"

"If I had gone to outside people earlier I would have realised earlier we were all making a big mistake."

And that's a wrap folks, well over seven hours later.