The Covid failures according to Dominic Cummings

Not so much a machinegunning as a bombardment by shells, leaving debris across almost all of Boris Johnson’s government. Dominic Cummings, in his six-and-a-half-hour appearance before the joint meeting of two Commons committees, targetted the prime minister and health secretary above all. He did not spare himself either, though – a previously hidden taste for self-deprecation being a clear tactic in his evidence; his own reputation will have suffered both from his account and its contradictions, never mind the most spectacular repudiation of the very notion of loyalty that politics has seen for some time.

The most damaging parts for Johnson may well prove to be Cummings’s blunt statement that “tens of thousands of people died who did not need to die”, particularly in care homes. His picture of a government in “complete chaos” in February and March 2020 may also settle in voters’ minds, even those who have forgiven the prime minister a general untidiness of approach.

But amid the swingeing blows at those he worked with are accusations about failures that demand substantial response. One, obviously, is his declaration that Matt Hancock, secretary of state for health, should have been fired for lying “10 or 15 times”. The second is the discharge of hospital patients to care homes without testing that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. Beyond that, though, is his portrait of the lack of planning and a system of government that was “completely overwhelmed” by the crisis. He is right, if too sweeping, in many of his accusations. The government needs to say how it will urgently grasp these failures – before waiting for the results of the inquiry that, as Cummings also says, will start later than it need.

The most damaging charges were aimed at Matt Hancock

It is hard to see that Hancock and the government can avoid responding to the allegations of lying, the most serious specific charges that Cummings launched. He accused the health secretary of “lying to everybody on multiple occasions in meeting after meeting in the cabinet room and publicly” – although when pressed by the committee he added little detail. His charge appears to be, in essence, that Hancock was bluffing to the cabinet about the ability of his department to handle the emerging problems in PPE, testing and care homes. If there is a reshuffle soon, the ferocity of his attack may even help protect Hancock; Johnson will not want to be seen to respond by assent.

The account of discharge of patients into care homes without testing also inflicts the kind of damage that the government may find hard to rebut – and will be the focus for many who feel their relatives and friends were among those “tens of thousands” Cummings says died unnecessarily. If there is legal action, Cummings’s words will be closely scrutinised.

SAGE, the government’s scientific advisory body, and government scientists come out well. The government’s use of that science advice does not – on a border policy or on understanding the implications of models in general.

Most of all, perhaps, it is the sustained and comprehensive portrait of a government in panic that Johnson and his team need to rebut. To people who already feel they are badly governed, it will have confirmed all their suspicions; to those who didn’t, it may well have conveyed a sense of profound unease.

Cummings’s argument that responsibilities of minsters and civil servants are unclear and that power and accountability are diffused is right – and a point that the IfG has made throughout. So is his case that civil service jobs should be open to competition from outside and that performance should be rewarded and failure exposed. But he offers few precise remedies for these old problems.

There were weaknesses throughout his account

For all his indefatigable testimony – and meticulous record keeping – Cummings was not a perfect witness. He was too sweeping in his condemnation for full credibility. He moved from arguing that it was “crackers” that Johnson was prime minister and that he himself had a senior role to condemning a political system that had not produced better candidates than Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn. But it did, might be the retort; “don’t start from here” is not a useful contribution to political debate. He weakened his pitch further by invoking a figure with “kingly powers” who could have better managed the crisis – an odd culmination to tens of thousands of words in his blogs on perfecting the machinery of government.

He praised chancellor Rishi Sunak throughout, saying he was “totally supportive” of lockdown, and blamed the prime minister entirely for raising economic considerations as a reason for reluctance over lockdowns. That underplays both the dilemma and Sunak’s advocacy of opening up. Similarly, he says of Michael Gove “I don’t think Gove had a huge amount of responsibility” even though Gove is the minister in charge of the Cabinet Office and Cummings had earlier described the Cabinet Office as “terrifyingly shit”. This picture does not add up. Gove was chairing the Covid operations cabinet committee from last summer and was very active; if that was ineffective, there are wider questions about why.

He offers little detail about the failures of the civil service, in particular his accusations of the Department of Health and Social Care being a “smoking ruin”. Cummings also offers a portrait of government from the centre. He said very little about local government, or about the workings of the NHS itself.

Most starkly, it is clear that at key points Cummings simply disagreed with the prime minister – for instance, on key decisions about lockdowns. There was a range of views, understandably, on these difficult decisions. The fact that Cummings thought the prime minister wrong does not of itself make the prime minister unfit for office as he alleges.

The prime minister’s former adviser adopted apology and self-deprecation as a sustained tactic throughout his evidence, offering many cases where he was sorry for not having come to views earlier, and that “I’m not smart”. While welcome, this failed to ring true given his style when in government. He denied that he had as much power as presumed, pointing to Hancock staying in his job as evidence of his own impotence. He was least credible on offering a new emphasis in his explanation of his infamous trip to Barnard Castle, saying that it was for security reasons, to avoid threats to his family. Would it not have been simpler – and better for public confidence in government health policy – if he had made that the sole reason then? And even so, there were surely other ways of addressing those concerns.

The public inquiry into the Covid crisis needs to start at once

Cummings finished, after the marathon session, with a handful of specific recommendations for changing the civil service: on accountability, on performance and on recruitment. These are old themes of his, and the IfG supports the aims of these although his testimony was longer on diagnosis than prescription. They do need urgent attention – and the government’s appetite for civil service reform, which seems to have survived Cummings’s exit, is welcome.

Nonetheless, what is needed in response to this onslaught – and even more, in response to the manifest failures – is the government’s recognition of the need for openness and for clearer lines of accountability in government. As we have argued, the government should start the formal inquiry now.